Best Laptop for College Student?

I'm going to be entering college this fall, and I need a reasonably priced laptop. I'll be majoring in photography, so a laptop that supports large amounts of photos and programs such as Photoshop CS3 is a must. I'm really trying to keep it under $2,000, and I probably want to stick with a PC. Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

HP has some nice laptops out. IBMs are nice too, but cost more than HPs

 

Well, I just got the Dell 1525 for under $500..has 3 Gig of RAM and runs fine...I actually removed Vista and put XP (not easy) on it and now it is really a good running laptop...battery life is not the best though.

 

I htink Macs are over priced for what you get, they have less ram, and still ahve the same CPUs and graphics as other computers.

It would be more cost effective to by a pc and dual boot it into Linux.

 

well she did say she wanted to stick with a pc...although a refurbished macbook can be a really good deal, then daul boot windows and it will do anything you want. Probably what I'll do when I find a need for a laptop

but as far as pc's go look at HP. Stay away from Dell, their cheap...and by cheap I mean unreliable and horrible. Had several Dell's and know a lot of people with Dell's, not a single one of them is or was a good computer.
Get as much ram as possible, a good daul core processor, and a good video card(about 256mb and up is generally considered good). stay away from integrated video cards and you should be fine.

 

HP laptops are great, they are reliable (which is the first and most important thing). I would also recommend a Macbook, Macbook Pro or Air as well as they are such industry standards in media work today that you really can't go wrong with it.

If you go with a PC Windows laptop, be sure to stick on to your Windows XP system, or you might also need to upgrade by downgrading - if you know what I mean =)

 

well... i just went through a few laptops, a couple HPs a couple IBMs and a couple Dells. some for work some for play. the HP laptops were the best but they had the worst LCDs. kinda strange since they make some of the best desktop monitors. the lenovos i used were OK, the screens were a little better. i had one of them for 2 years and it started falling apart after 1. thats why my company switched to HP. everyones lenovo started falling apart after about a year.

my Dells have been the best. always top quality screens and if you go with a XPS or Studio they are top quality build. inspirons are still nice but not top of the line build quality. my GF has had a 1525 inspiron for about 1.5 years now, not 1 sign on wear. same with my M1330 XPS. i just got my Studio 1737 about two months ago but the thing is amazing for photography. blazing fast especially with RAID0 =]
hope my mindless rambling helped.

 

I think I'll probably go with an HP... for now that looks like my best choice. I've still got a couple of weeks before I decide.

And yeah, I do think I'm going to stay away from Dells.

Macs are pretty much out of the question... I'm not too worried about viruses or spyware.