Hi,
Laptop or Desktop?
For a desktop, find a local builder who's 'on the edge' (IE: not the guy
that's still stuck on Win2000). He/She will know what hardware to use for a
nice Vista-compliant system and it won't cost much more than something from
Dell/HP/Gateway, etc. If you have some knowledge of your own, you might try
it yourself using prematched barebones components from tufshop, newegg,
tigerdirect, or one of the many other builder sites out there. It's not as
difficult as you might think, and knowing what's in the box makes it easier
for you to diagnose and fix any problems.
As to laptops, it seems to be mostly hit or miss. Some like and stick to
specific brands, like Toshiba, Acer, or IBM. Me, I've found that not going
cheap usually results in the best satisfaction. I'd suggest that you
concentrate on newer models with a minimum of 1.5-2GB ram and video of 128MB
or better. No need for a 64-bit OS, but I have found the ones with the AMD
Turion 64 processors to run pretty smoothly with minimal problems.
--
Best of Luck,
Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
Windows help -
www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts
http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com