Alienware M11X

IT's a pretty small screen for a general purpose laptop. But as long as you have an external monitor, I think it's a pretty good machine. I could do my job (sys admin) on an Atom netbook so the way more powerful SU4100 should be able to handle schoolwork.

I don't know that you'd want to do you homework on the 11.6 screen though. hook it up to a bigger monitor to save your eyes.

Also, for a CULV notebook, battery life is on the shorter side and it's also heavy for an 11.6 notebook. If you don't care about that, then there are probably no negatives.

$850 will probably buy just the basic machine since you have to pay tax and shipping also.

Well, I'd use it for note taking more or less. Homework would be done on my desktop. $850 is a rough estimate. I could extend it to around $950 to upgrade the CPU. The weight doesn't bother me at all. I'm just going for something easy to pack away

I understand it has a full size keyboard so it should be good for touch typists. The only 3 upgrades I plan to order when I buy one is the SU7300, 4GB RAM, and blutooth. That came out to $969 + tax + shipping. Probably close to $1100 out the door. If I had to give up something, it'd probably be the processor as the only difference is 1MB of L2 cache.

How well is the basic CPU for gaming? Only reason I ask is because its pentium. I thought those were out and the Core series was stepping up to bat as the standard CPU for intel