Thanks for the feedback. I'm actually leaning toward either a Pentium 4 or AMD's equivalent, 512MB of RAM and at least a 40 GB hard drive. Here's a dumb question for you: Do most laptops come with a modem, networking cards and USB Ports? I was thinking it'd be nice to hook up an external USB or firewire drive to increase storage capacity. I'd surely want to have a CD/RW as well. Right now it's "research time" since I need to get a job, a place of my own, and a computer.