Toshiba!

As much as people complain about HP's, if you know how to use them, and you have a good virus protectant, then you are good to go. I love the HP that I'm working with. I had a sony before and it only lasted a year. My dad has a dell laptop, and he's not too found of it. Our school has apple computers, they are good for art and such, but for school work, people with many photos, and music, it's not a good computer because it has such a small hard-drive. I have 42gb of music sitting on my HP and it still runs smoothly (and that's without the movies or music videos) Hope that this helps.

i had a dell and less than 2 yrs after i got it a few keys failed then the whole thing failed. a LOT of money wasted. (im getting a new laptop and my dad ordered...another del. woohoo )

hp, I have three computers and two printers and they're all hp.

I have a Toshiba

so far no bad experiences with toshiba

~ hp. all the way. i can't stand dell...

just cheap for general use, HP/Compaq

if you want to play games, Asus

Well... My experience tells that Gateway has a good price-features balance, if you know what I mean...
I have a SONY VAIO, wich is very good btw.

At the end, all notebooks require some experience so you can personalize it, apart from the brand, each one comes with a lot of softwares that don't help in much things and make the machine slower.

Buying a refurbished notebook is a good idea too. They are often as good as a new one and sometimes for the half of the price.

Since you work with pictures, have in mind a good display and maybe a dedicated graphics memory.

My Sony is a VGN-FW 550. VERY good to work with all aplications. I recommend.

Ah! Where's Toshiba?