Laptops, Any suggestions? Options

[lojay]

So I am going to get a laptop for college, but I am having trouble just finding one. I know for a fact that I do not want a mac just because I highly prefer using PC. Now, I wanted a hard drive with 7200rpm but I can't seem to find any... the only one I could find was the Dell XPS systems. Does anyone know of any others? Or is this pretty unrealistic to want? I was hoping for a HP but that seems to be hopeless.

Anyone laptop savvy enough to help me?

[nikx618]

get a dell, those work pretty good[:

[coconutter]

get a dell, those work pretty good[:

Not as a laptop. They wear out pretty quickly.

[lojay]

Not as a laptop. They wear out pretty quickly.

By wearing out pretty quickly, do you mean their battery life doesn't last too long? Or in general?
My brother was looking into a Dell Latitude D830...
-Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7250 (2.00GHz) 2M L2 Cache, 800MHz Dual Core
-Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate Bonus-Windows® XP Professional loaded (But since I don't like how buggy Vista I'm going to just use Windows XP since it's pretty much been perfected)
-Warranty & Service: 3 Year Limited Warranty and 3 Year Mail-in Service
-LCD Panel: 15.4 inch Wide Screen WXGA LCD Panel
-Memory: 2.0GB, DDR2-667 SDRAM, 2 DIMMS
-Hard drive: 80GB Hard Drive, 9.5MM, 7200RPM (Free Fall Sensor)
-Optical Drive: 8X DVD+/-RW w/Roxio and Cyberlink Power DVD™
-Video Card: Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
-Wifi Wireless Card: Dell Wireless™ 1395 802.11g Mini Card
-Bluetooth Wireless: Dell Wireless® 360 Bluetooth Module for Windows XP
-Fingerprint Reader: Standard Touchpad

It's mostly basics. But... the only problem I have with this is that the laptop looks so boring. I know looks don't matter as long as the laptop is good.. but it still bothers me a little bit. Anyone know of any laptop with better specs around the same price? It will ultimately add up to around $1,087.

I was looking into tablets though, so I could draw graphs in my notes easily, but... I went to Best Buy to check one out and I realized that it didn't have a program built in where I could just type my notes, swivel the screen around and draw in a graph, then swivel and return to typing notes. So if that is even possible, I'd have to figure out what king of program I can run it with.

That was helpful, thank you. It narrowed a fel things down for me and I'll take a look at Gateway.