Okay, all my tech-savvy readers. I need to buy a new laptop. My two-year-old Gateway laptop (model 4520GZ, purchased at Best Buy) is out of commission due to a melted DC jack. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the rest of the machine, but the genius squad at Gateway soldered the jack to the motherboard. Thus, if I want to replace the jack (a five dollar part) I have to get the whole motherboard replaced. And that, for those of you who watched Family Guy last night, “really grinds my gears.”

So I am looking at some new machines and would like to buy one this weekend. I would ideally like to spend under 1K on this thing. Here are my list of ideal specs:

• sufficient RAM to run multiple programs at once that use lots of graphics (web developing apps, Photoshop, poker games)
• reasonable hard drive space
• “TrueLife”/”HD BrightView” whatever it is they call that nice, crisp display, 15 inches
• CD burner
• wireless capability
• outstanding customer service for more than a year
• realistic warranty options
• must be a PC (for both poker and NYU reasons)

I don’t travel with my laptop often, but I do work in various rooms of the house and often for long hours.

Here are some machines I’ve been looking at:

• HP machine on sale at Staples
• Inspiron machine at Dell
• Compaq at P.C. Richard

Thoughts? Anyone know of other machines that might fit my needs? Any help would be much appreciated.