At this very moment, I am posting on my Acer laptop. My wife bought the laptop this previous summer. We paid around $500 for it, so she would have a good quality PC to use for school. She is able to use it on campus, and use it around campus at wifis.

I started using it because my other PC, our Dell desktop's monitor is dying. It is like burnt out on the left side, so the laptop is the default PC around our house.

The laptop is also the newest and most updated. My older Dell is kind of like a throw together of older hardware from past PCs of mine and my brother in law. We like to take hardware devices from a lot of other PCs that are dying and try to make super computers from what is left. And then we network it with our web routers. Fun, fun...

We plan to get a cheap server from my bro in law's work and make a nice customized network server. Can't wait!

Specifications of my laptop:
Acer Aspire 3680
Intel Celeron (CPU 440 @ 1.86GHz 1.87 GHz)
RAM: 1014 MB
120GB HDD (split into 3 partitions, Windows, minor stuff including webserver & a nifty restore partition.
Running Windows Vista Home Premium, considering doing a dual boot with Ubuntu to try out linux.
I've had it since April/May last year, I've had to do a few factory restores (from epic slowness to a BSoD marathon) but it's currently doing good right now.

Well, Celerons don't really run Vista properly, so ya, it might explain why you're having problems.

xboxrulz