Ok I am a Computer Science major in college so first thing look around before getting a dell and you will see a major price difference. if you want service then yeah go with dell but otherwise most others are cheaper. second a laptop can be just as good as a desktop depending on what you want to do with it and what you put in it. if you put an athlon XP processor in it it will be better than most desktops you also need at least 512 megs of ram. on the downside the maximum harddrive space for a laptop is 80 gigs. oh yeah and I use a laptop