NJunk:

As stated above, quality is the most important thing when buying a laptop as they cannot be upgraded that much by consumers. However, another important thing to ask yourself is what do I need in a laptop? More then likely you will only need a basic laptop for school work and web browsing and average things. You could purchase a great laptop for these types of tasks for around 700 – 800 dollars. Brands that are great would be HP, Sony, Toshiba, Samsung. My personal preference is to stay away from Dell. I bought 3 laptops from Dell and all of their hard drives had problems. As for a processor, you should be suited with an i3 or an i5, an i7 is just overkill and will shorten battery life. 3 or 4 gigs of RAM should be just fine for the average user, but I wouldn’t get anything below that. You want this machine to last a long time, so if you buy higher end now you won’t have to upgrade for quite a few years.

This laptop right here, http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Samsung+-+Laptop+/+Intel%26%23174%3B+Core%26%23153%3B+i5+Processor+/+17.3%22+Display+/+4GB+Memory+/+500GB+Hard+Drive+-+Red/Black/9728443.p?id=1218161511080&skuId=9728443 , is a truly fantastic laptop. It is a reasonable price, but has the capability to do nearly anything you want. Including playing games and video editing.

Any of these laptops would also be good, http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pavilion+Laptop+/+AMD+Phenom%26%23153%3B+II+Processor+/+15.6%22+Display+/+6GB+Memory+/+640GB+Hard+Drive+-+Brushed+Aluminum/9980207.p?id=1218204947083&skuId=9980207 . http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+-+Satellite+Laptop+/+Intel%26%23174%3B+Core%26%23153%3B+i5+Processor+/+14%22+Display+/+4GB+Memory+/+500GB+Hard+Drive+-+Slate/1006408.p?id=1218207311895&skuId=1006408 . http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+VAIO+Laptop+/+Intel%26%23174%3B+Core%26%23153%3B+i3+Processor+/+14%22+Display+/+4GB+Memory+/+500GB+Hard+Drive+-+Coconut+White/9980021.p?id=1218204943663&skuId=9980021
A thing to note is, the sony laptop I provided a link for has worse graphics card then the others, meaning you won’t be able to play games or do video editing.

Remember tho, you can look for yourself. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olstemplatemapper.jsp?id=pcat17080&type=page&qp=crootcategoryid%23%23-1%23%23-1~~q70726f63657373696e6774696d653a3e313930302d30312d3031~~cabcat0500000%23%230%23%2311a~~cabcat0502000%23%230%23%23o~~nf518||24363030202d2024383939&list=y&nrp=15&sc=abComputerSP&sp=%2Bcurrentprice+skuid&usc=abcat0500000
Just use the information I gave you about the brands (hp, sony, toshiba, samsung), the ram (atleast 3gb) and the proccesor (i3 or i5) and you will be fine. Hope this helps. Cheers!