What would be a good laptop for college?

[Lily]

Hello all, I am into my second semester of college and I am looking to buy a new laptop. I currently have a Toshiba Satellite L655d. When not working on my school work, I like to surf the web and play games (both on facebook and with disks, like the sims 3). I would like something that is not too heavy to carry around, but I also do not like small screens. 13-15 inches would be fine. Macbooks are out of the question as they are too expensive for me. The max I am able to spend is $450. I am not really a fan of windows 8. I guess I'm so used to windows 7 that I am afraid to try it, but I notice that most new laptops come with windows 8. If I were to get a windows 8 laptop will it take some getting used too? Or are there still some windows 7 laptops that fit my needs? I don't want to go through the hassle of buying a windows 8 laptop then have someone install windows 7 on it. Any suggestions and advice is appreciated, thank you!

[john]

There is so much adverse reaction to w8 that HP are selling laptops with W7 installed.
A sensible alternative would be to upgrade your own laptop - add extra memory, and clean out old software etc. You can install and run Glary utilities free and it will do a good job.
(Be careful during the installation to read ALL the options so you dont add the ASK toolbar or similar)
You could then keep it another year when W9 will be released.