Compaq/HP has terrible customer service. A modem went out on my laptop a couple of years ago and it was still under warranty. They tell me to send it in for repairs, and what do they do? Reformat my harddrive. I called and complained and they said it was their "standard procedure" even though it was nowhere in the literature associated with the warranty.

As a tech perspective, yeah, that would tend to make it easier. No potential driver conflicts on the reinstalled modem, but WTH?

ok soo I'll help you out here

for a computer
importance is usually from this list
cpu... ex intel core duo, core quad, celeron, amd athalon

i choose intel over amd because its easier to use and uses less processes.
also the more gb it can handle at once the easier programs will work.
possibly go for a duo :)
next its ram

more ram = being able to do more; i suggest at least 3gb if you have a new machine coming with vista, 2gb if with xp

then is hard drive space,
well now a days more is better; usually standard about 500gb and you should be set i mean what else do you do with space unless your me and download the entire internet Xd

i guess next on the line is dvd/cd drives... if you want to burn stuff make sure that they add a dvd/rw+- if you need to do burning;p most do come with at least one drive.

next is graphics cards...
the newer the card is the more it usually can do...
there is memory differences for graphics cards as well.
playing games for nowadays usually a graphics card with 512 memory is suffient.

umm and the recertifed is that they made sure everything works, just its was opened so the labor and parts usually becomes 90 days. After that your on your own

but i hope this helps :)

First off whats your budget?

I have my laptop at home so we can get buy using that for a while.

But if I wanted to replace in the next month 300

If I wait until say around christmas probably 6 to 700

I like to pay cash for stuff.

For your under $300:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883109017

For your under $700:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229029

yeah, cyberpower's compy's are cheap but are decent.
I'm using one right now :).
It came ready to use right out of the box.
and it comes with absolutely no crap so i didn't have to sit and uninstall my computer :).

thanks those look great. guess when it comes time i will have to ask what slaving my hard-drive is cuase i just went :zomg::lost::gasp::uhoh: when i saw that.

pretty much what slaving your hard drive means is taking it out of the emachine and then sticking it into your new machine as a secondary hard drive.
Master is the hard drive that the computer boots from and slave is the an extra hard drive. Of course if you prefer not to mess with internal item of the computer, you can always just get an external casing for the hard drive and use the current hard drive as an external.
Either way, we can help you with that too :)