MooseMan3000

I'm just going to take this a piece at a time.


good battery
Well, yeah. To get a laptop that has good battery life, the biggest thing to make sure of is that every piece of hardware in it is labelled "mobile." My dad's lappy has a Pentium 4 (NOT mobile) in it, and that thing eats batteries like nothing else. Mobile hardware is designed to run with less power and to generate less heat. Get a P4-M, and the mobile version of whatever video card you get, and you should be in good shape. Also, taking good care of your battery will help it last longer.

easy to carry around (im in college so in a backpack)
So get a light one. Stay away from gaming or multimedia oriented laptops, and you should be all set. Most of them aren't very heavy now, unless you get a monster of a machine. Dell XPS = bad. Dell Inspiron 700m = good. Also, I would get a backpack specifically designed to carry a laptop. They have a separate, padded compartment for the machine itself. It just makes things easier.

I would need wireless and non-wireless networking capabilites.
I can't find a laptop that doesn't come with these features standard. They all should by now.

I have my current desktop hooked up to my HDTV, so if i could do that w/ a laptop that would be great. what about a normal monitor?
Most laptops still come with a VGA connector for your monitor. Hooking up to an HDTV, however, is another story. You might be able to find something with RCA or component outputs, but I wouldn't count on it. You might also be able to find a USB2 or PCMCIA adapter, though I can't say as I've looked.

I also have some klipsch 4 spks + sub, would I be able to hook that up and get use of them?
Once again, anything beyond plain ol' stereo sound is out of the ordinary on a laptop. However, I know for a fact you can get a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCMCIA card (slides in the side of the laptop) that has 7.1 sound. If you really need the surround that badly, that is one option.

A decent size HD
Every manufacturer offers lots of different sizes. Just pick the one you want. I personally wouldn't go any less than 60 if it was going to be my main computer... probably more.

I would want a cd burner.
This is another thing that is basically standard now. Most machines come with a combo drive (CD-RW/DVD-ROM), though you can upgrade to a DVD-RW for pretty cheap. Might be work looking into. Single layer blank DVDs are awfully cheap these days, and they're great for backing stuff up. I just got 200 blank DVD+R 8x for $60. Not a bad deal.

I don't play any games, so if it could play some it is just a bonus.
Then don't worry about getting a graphics card. Just find something with integrated video, instead. It will be much cheaper, and it will work fine for your needs.

I just need it for internet, winamp, and word pros.
but I do need it to last me throughout college

Is that all you plan on doing in college with it? If so, then it really doesn't matter too much what you get. Those programs won't start requiring more resources two years from now.


Anyway, since you're looking for specific recommendations, my best laptop experience has been with Dell. Some people say IBM are good, but three of my friends with various models of IBM laptops have had major hardware breakdowns (hard drive, mouse, CD-ROM, CD-RW... the list goes on and on). I just can't recommend them. I'd personally get their midrange laptop (I think the numbers are in the 6000s now? I'm not sure), but if your budget is a little bigger, you might want to look into their higher end ones, or the more mobile ones. The price for a good laptop has dropped quite a bit in the past couple years. I'd say you could get everything you need for less than $1200.

Edit: I just thought I should add that the only person I know whose laptop hasn't had some sort of hardware breakdown has a PowerBook. I still don't like them as much, but that's mainly because I'm a gamer. Something to chew on.