can someone recommended a laptop/netbook?

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I need something with a big hard drive to store my music and videos and also my essays for school
I needed it to run XP or higher (and Ubuntu or fedora)
I need a Wi-fi Card built in (so I can go to my sister's house and can surf the web with out her looking at everything I do)
Something that will be good for an A+ certification class(my high school is letting some students go to a Tech Center for some extra classes ).
a webcam and a mic built in (for yahoo messenger chats with my BF)
it needs to be cheap also so that i can afford it on a part time job. Any suggestions?

I can recommend a cheap laptop, but I am by no means a computer expert or geek. But I bought a 12-inch Dell Latitude D400 on eBay less than a month ago for $104. It is refurbished, but from an excellent corporation called Materials Processing Corp. in Minnesota. They recycle computers. They have Apple and IBM stuff too.

buy something cheap or buy something good, but don't buy something in between.

Cheap: an Asus.
I'd recommend an Apple one. You can also boot in windows if the need ever arises (or... Linux )
Pricier, yes, but won't be a piece of crap in a couple of years like a windows one.

Orwell and Fuzzy are the biggest nerds here (and Gramirez and Kip, and etc... ), they can recommend something more, let's see what they have to say.

I got an HP laptop that's pretty good. It's the Pavilion Notebook model; it has 4 GB RAM, a 400 GB hard drive, and a webcam. Don't buy a Dell. I've heard they crash a lot (though this may be because the people who had them crash were running Windows).

I'm thinking of skipping the normally recommended middle mouse (jobs/gates) and going with a system76 laptop. It comes with Ubuntu linux instead of windows or OSX.

My brother is in the market for a new one, and its up to me to select it.

http://www.system76.com/

Just to prove that I am indeed the big nerd computerlove wishes he was.

I have an Asus Eee 900HD net book that I bought last year for a little under $400.00.
Recently I upgraded by replacing the original 160 gig hard-drive with a 320 gig and I am about to install Ubuntu Net-book remix on it and make it dual-booting.

I also have an Acer Aspire-One net-book that I use as a backup computer. I bought for a little under $300.00 in October of 2008.

thanks everyone for the advice

@fuzzy thanks for the link

This sounds like the ideal one.... I have this laptop and using it right now.

My version is 4GB of ram, but you might have around 2GB or a reasonable 1GB.
Yours would have Windows 7. I got this laptop before Windows 7 has released, but have the compatible drivers.

- Built in webcam. (look out for version with a webcam).
- Wifi card built in - Also picks up the wireless signal very well.
- Stores around 250GB of storage. (yours could store 160GB).
- nVidia Graphics (yours could have intel).
- Slot of HDMI. (HD Graphics)

Hopefully should be pretty good one for you.

(Link)
This should satisfy those requirements. It costs about $280 US. It only has 1GB of RAM, and only 160GB of Hard Drive Space, but it should suffice. As long as you have access to a 1+ GB Flash Drive/ External HDD/ External CD drive it will run linux. Word of warning, Netbooks have the worst keyboards ever designed, so try one in a store to see if you can stand it.

And for the A+ Certification it appears that the only requirements for a computer will be one capable of connecting to the internet and viewing documents.

Apple Mac