How do I know what kind of laptop to buy?

[squaresuit833]

I currently have an Acer, 4gb, 500mb, 2ghz that has some mega problems that is slowing it down. Instead of spending more money to fix it, I decided to invest UNDER $500 in a new one.

I'm not really tech-savy, so I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to buy...

I mostly use my computer to write, check emails, and watch a few movies a week online. I don't game at all. I do edit videos occasionally, as I am a film student, but haven't gotten that far into the film-y part of it yet, and honestly just want to write rather than make movies.
Sorry, meant 4gb memory, 500gb hard drive

[Kevin]

I would like to suggest to go with HP because i have used it from many times and I have not face any single problem up to now.

[Ryan]

You Seem like a great person for a chrome book. Chrome books are special Notebooks with very small operating systems, very little RAM, usually 32-64 GB of hard drive. what's the advantage to all this? they can be crazy cheap (sometimes even 150$), and fly through web browsing things if you invest 300-400 dollars on one. the disadvantaged is that Chrome books disable downloads from web browsers, and can't install Microsoft office. though they can download things from the chrome web store and chrome has it's own writing software within chrome OS. But sadly, you can't even TYPE if you don't have wifi on one of these bad boys. though if you don't mind the chrome books flaws and disabilities, then you'll have a super-speed web browsing machine with great battery life that would cost you as little as 150$
check some links:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/dev...s.html#ss2

[Alan]

What CPU your existing computer has? There are only 2 reasons a PC will slow down. 1) Software. 2) Dying hard drive. If the CPU is fast enough for your need, there is a good chance you can fix it far cheaper than buying a new one.

[Sum Ting Wong]

acer is probably one of the easiest to restore to factory settings that would solve all your problems