Hey, GW. Long time no see. Anywho, my sister has a Dell Inspiron 1505 running Windows XP Media Edition, and today she managed to get the Trojan DNS Changer. As I was looking for a way to transfer a virus scanner to her laptop (she has a bad one, and neither of us have USB drives), her laptop gave a single beep and froze up. Now her computer will start up and go to her desktop, but attempting to click on anything will make the computer beep once again before it freezes (and then you have to turn it off manually). It freezes in Safe Mode, too.

So I think to myself: "Self, if you can't do anything with it, why don't you ask the infinitely smarter collective mind of GW?" Has anybody else had this problem before? If so, what did you do to remedy it? And if the laptop doesn't work anymore, is it possible to salvage the files anyway? I figure it might be, because the computer does display the desktop and its items before it freezes, but I wouldn't know how to go about getting things from a computer that you can't use.

So my graduation gift, as it has been in the past with other members of my family, is the obligatory college laptop. I'm still really deciding between a Mac or a regular laptop, so I suppose I'll go through the rundown of what I'd use it for:

• Digital Art (Photoshop)
• Word Processing
• Movie Storage
• Some games (perhaps)
• Programming applications (depending on my major)
• Other basic programs
• Lots of additional space

So it's not as if I'm saying "choose a laptop for me" or any of that; I'm really asking which ones you might suggest from you personal experience, and which ones you'd shy away from. Were there laptops you got that you regret purchasing? There are some brands that I'm definitely going to try to stay away from, most notably being Dell (which has proven to be a bad brand of laptops, from what I've experienced) and Acer (it just seems too slow and clunky). The Macs seem quite nice, but I'm a bit worried as to how my files might end up when I transferred them to a different operating program. Also, the amount of space that Macs offer seems to be rather small when compared to a regular PC.

The stories I've heard about Vista have been varied (some recommend and some condone), but the gist of what I've gathered from it is that it's high level of security can act like a double-edged sword. I tend to have a variety of programs on my computer, so has anyone run into problems running certain applications or files?

I'm also looking to purchase another external hard drive (Western Digital has worked quite well, so far) so any suggestions for that would be nice, as well.

There's really no price limit on what I can get (though under $2000 is preferable), so ...