suggestions for laptops

For your price range try either Dell or HP. As far as the turion X2 vs the core duo, the performance is about the same. However, if you get a notebook with the mobile versions of the Core 2 chip, you will get significantly higher performance over the X2. Check this out:AMD's dual core laptops. Core 2 is not included, check elsewhere for comparisons. But as you can see, core duo and turion x2 perform similarly.

I am familiar with Dell, and have an E1405 with an Intel (yonah) core duo.

My E1405 gets good battery life, but looking at the Dell site for configuration of the E1405 is a problem--although I do not like the current models for higher pricing anyway (my E1405 came to ~ $850).

On the other hand, configuring a Dell E1501 comes to about $880 (with tax & free shipping offer); which I included: "tru-life" for the 15.1 inch display, a Turion X2 TL-50, an upgrade to a 9 cell battery, and "upgrade" Dell wireless 1490 802.11a/g Mini Card (54Mbps).

Note: For this setup I skipped warranty purchase as well.

Unfortunately, I did not see any Dell coupon (on Dell website) for this budget setup. If you do a search (such as Google) you can find coupons offered for Dell and other manufacturers.

*It also has 512 MB of memory at 533 Mhz and a 60 GB hard drive of unspecificed rpm.*

In consideration of this I chose to skip on the memory upgrade and hard drive upgrade, because one can perform the upgrade him/herself and save money and obtain better parts. Besides, accessing the memory and hard drive on a laptop is usually very simple. Just be sure to get a fast hard drive (7200 rpm) for good performance. You can try a vendor such as Newegg for the memory and hard drive.

I am not sure how the battery life will be for this laptop due to the size (15.1 inch) and the amount of memory you wish to run--it seems that running a lot of memory in a laptop (> 2 Gigs for example) actually uses more battery. Overall, running one gig of ram should be fine.

I would also warn you of the perception that the turion may be cheaper, even though I am unfamilar with AMD mobile CPU's. Correspondingly, vendors have been charging a lot for upgrades so do not expect 1 gig ram from an item--and some buyers do not like the vendors ram quality and often select the base amount during a configuration and just upgrade it their self.

Also, on the build of the E1501, the Turion X2 TL-50 seems to be the sweet spot. The upgrade to the Turion X2 TL-56 for $100 seems resonable though and comes with a 512 KB L2 cache over the TL-50's 256 Kb L2 cache.
I think the X2 is a good chip, you can look at additional info on wikipedia here. If you look at the L2 cache stuff and compare to Intel mobile CPUs such as Core (yonah) and Core 2 (merom) just realize that the architectures are different.

Like what lostandwandering says, the X2 is comparable to the Core (yonah's) in the link.

For wifi, I am not certain about the details because I chose the centrino package, for my Intel laptop, and do not have input on this. For the E1501 the only options are Dell wireless, and I do not know if one can do an upgrade to a better card with the a/b/g specifications. Here is some wiki info on IEEE802.11 (link). Research on the centrino package (wifi) for Intel laptop computers may be beneficial, especially for battery life as this was the selling point for me.

So, that is my input, I do not know what size considerations you desire; it can affect the mobility and battery life (such as the 15.1 inch Dell E1501).

By all means look into other vendors besides Dell.

Good luck

I'm thinking about buying toshiba Satellite M115-S3094
though it doesn't have i gig ram but good battery life ....

any other laptop similer to these specs ???

I got eye on this asus notebook http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E1683...
also, most people prefer dell or hp when it comes to laptops but how’s the quality of asus laptops?? I know they make great Mmother boards and stuff but how it comes to laptops