Hi Fay,
For what it’s worth, everyone jumps on the new operating system band wagon as a sales pitch, we’ve had the same with 98, 2000, XP etc etc, Billy Gates wants to corner the market with his latest OS and that gives the retailers a chance to flog more of their machines as they seem to think we all want the latest, industry is still going over to XP and Vista? give it time I guess
Buying a machine is very much what you want it to do eg, graphics,office or home use etc, you should also consider the choice of manufacturer, some laptops a very well constructed and others suffer from being easily damaged. At best, most are lobbed into back seats of cars, dropped onto beds and used on wobbley laps, plastic or aluminium chassis are prone to warping, even cracking, whereas a more expensive but more solidly built machine will not suffer from this and will not demand costly repair bills, talk to the salespeople by all means but speak to the guys on the repair desks and they will tell you more about the makes, plus odds on are that they will have more experience, if your talking to the Uni, talk to the tekkies.
Dru