What kind of laptop shopping should I do?

[Ryan Z]

Howdy all. I'm a college student as well as a poker player (seems like half the board is in the same boat). Since I'll be studying in Spain from Jan-Jun this upcoming year, my parents offered to get me a laptop computer. I'm not looking for anything fancy by any means; just something servicable that I could take to a Wi-Fi cafe over there and to type papers up on. Like I said, simple. I'll probably play a little bit of poker on the laptop, but I'm not looking for a monster display so I can play 6 tables at once.

After the long intro, here's my question: what route should I go for getting a laptop, say somewhere between $350-650? I thought about the Black Friday deals, but didn't see standing in line at 3:30 as much of an option. Should I go eBay style, call Dell, try to find a deal at BB or CC, bulid my own, or maybe even try a smaller computer chain, like MicroCenter? Sometimes they have pretty good deals.

I'm not leaving until Jan. 19th, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for the time.

[cwsiggy]

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2626

Great site - everything you need to know bout laptops, deals, coupons, forums. that link above is for the "budget" holiday guide. I would recommend trying to get a Pentium M chip if you can afford it. Mucho better on the battery life.