Okay, so I'm graduating from high school in may. (No, I don't have to worry about failing since I don't need to pass any of my classes to have enough credit to graduate!) My parents are going to get me a laptop as a congratulations present thing, and I don't know what kind would be best.

I would be using it for surfing the web, and college work mostly (and maybe some Age of Empires II). All I know is that they're looking for something under $1000 (the less close to 1000, the better), and they want to find it at Costco (which I don't understand). I've looked around online a bit, but I don't really know what I'm looking for! Can you guys recommend me a good laptop? Thanks in advance!

Do you HAVE to have the portability of a laptop? Any desktop PC will out perform a similarily priced laptop.

Also, from what i know Costco is like a supermarket chain in the US? Never buy computers from supermarkets - best bet is newegg.com.

For around $1000 you can get:

which seems like a decent laptop. You're not going to get spectacular gamign performance from it but it would probably run most older (>1 year old) games quite well. Obv. not Crysis.

If you can afford it get the:

$949 MSI GX620-001US which seems from the reviews and specs to be a really good laptop, plus a free backpack for it.

Well, I'd be taking it to classes with me and such, so I would definitely rather have a laptop than a desktop.
Costco is a huge chain, it's got lower prices because it's shipped right from the factory... I don't know why my parents want to buy one there, but I'll see if I can get them to change their minds.

Do you know how reliable those laptops are?

This is what I got (at $1,049), but it is SERIOUSLY low in price right now:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9053007&st=HP+Pavilion+dv7-1175nr&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1218012194815

Best of all is that is has Blu-Ray with an Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT with Nvidia PureVideo HD (for the Blu-Ray).

You can get a very good laptop for less than 1000$ (I'm guessing US currency).

Here are some minimum specs I would recommand:

RAM: At least 2GIG. 3-4 is preferable, especially with Vista.

Processor: Dual-Core Processor, Intel has the upper hand currently.

Hard Disk: minimum 5400rpm, 7200rpm is ideal. As for size, at least 160gig.

Make sure it has more than 2 USB ports, the cards reader (SD, MiniSD, etc.)

All laptops come with wireless network card, so you don't have to worry about it.

The rest is trivial, such as looks, integrated webcam and a high quality video card.

About s reliable as a laptop can be. They aren't made to be thrown around which alot of people do, then they complain that its broken.

Overall I'd recommend the MSI because I've never had a bad experience with them, their customer service is great and it has a handy backpack with it which would make it safer to carry around, it would eliminate the possibility of you knocking it into things like tables and such as you move.

Very true^^ My laptop does the job (Uni work, gaming etc) with 4GB RAM, Vista 64-bit etc etc but for your requirements I don't think that it would be absolutely neccessary. Not too sure about were to look for computers in America but those links provided by Wraith don't seem too bad at all.

Ive used the Pavillions before and i have to say for typing they're really good because (Assuming it's the same layout as the AMD ones) they have a full keyboard and the screen quality was great.

The only bad thing i have to say about them was that i saw a few with broken hinges which made the screen flop around awfully, they dont last too long on battery and IIRC it ran really hot.

Ha snap!

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'll run them by my parents and see what they think!