I might be buying a laptop during summer break, but I'm lost. I'm only a light user, and I'll only be listening to music, word processing, and watching movies. Any size for me is ok, and any price below $700. What are the most important parts (processor, memory, hard drive), and if our home already has SBC Yahoo DSL, will we have to pay for another wireless connection?

Thanks for the help.

I don't know what your ISP's policies are, so I can't advise you there. You might want to call them to find out your options. Connection sharing is generally a viable option, though. You'll just have to have your home machine on to act as a gateway.

As for the laptop, anything past 500mhz will do the job. You'll want about 256 megs of ram as a hard minimum if you're going to be running XP. You can get away with less if it's going to be a linux, or 98SE machine.

Music and video tend to be hard-drive intensive, and laptop harddrives tend to be slow, however, so you'll want the biggest, fastest drive you're comfortable affording. Your alternative is a DVD drive (with a writer on your main box).

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