@SmashTheState Very true. I still have a Powerbook 180 around here that works fine except for the long-since-deceased NiCad battery; as long as it is plugged in, it works great for basic stuff.
That is also why I raised an eyebrow at “i5 processor minimum.” since even I don’t need that much despite being a gamer who also transcodes multimedia files and does other things that require a bit (though not an excessive amount) of horsepower. My $500 Toshiba has a CPU that is plenty peppy and can do one thing a mobile i5 can’t; it lasts 6 hours on a 6-cell battery. (The Core i5 laptops I’ve seen typically get under 3) And if the intent is to get something as fast as a desktop, my desktop’s bottom-rung i3 is about 50% more powerful than even the best laptop i5 CPU.
I played some pretty intense games on my old Aspire One netbook. It could even handle Fable:The Lost Chapter, a game that requires a 64MB minimum video chip/card, so it was more than capable of handling the sort of tasks that most people ask their computers to do.
The reason I generally recommend Toshiba is the combination of value and reliability. The top three for reliability (in no particular order) are Acer, Asus, and Toshiba. Meanwhile, Dell and HP should be avoided like the plague. They may have been good once, but their recent record is craptacular.
Acer is a little lower in reliability but still above-average and they tend to be great values for the money. They have a decent selection of models for many needs and budgets, and unless you want something fancy, you can’t go wrong with Acer. The only reason I ding them is that an A is better than an A-minus.
Asus… technically good, but I personally just don’t like them. If nothing else, the design of their website makes it impossible to find the model/specs I want, and if their site is that poorly designed then I can’ t help but wonder where else they designed things wrong. Other people (including many professional reviewers) like them so they can’t be too bed, but I don’t see myself buying one.
If I was in the market to replace my T135 laptop, I would consider this L645 as it is faster than what I have now (and probably more than the OP needs) yet under $500.
The OP’s $600 cap narrows the options though. That eliminates 201 of their 290 models, including all of the i5 and i7, as well as all but four of the i3. Take away those with AMD, Celeron, or Core2 Duo CPUs that are underpowered and you are left with only 28 to choose from, mostly in the L655 family except for the four i3’s (C655). Moving the cap up to $800 finally allows the i5, and again, it’s a lot of L655s. Acer is a bit harder to navigate, but the best I found for $600 or less was also an i3.
I suspect that the OP’s wants the impossible here. Barring sales, steep discounts, or outright theft, there is no way to get a $600 i5. However, if they dropped the i5 requirement and had a realistic idea of what CPU would suit their needs without breaking the bank, then we’d have an easier time finding them a decent machine. It just won’t be an i5.
