What laptop would you recommend I buy?

I'm a 25-year-old who hopes to return to graduate school within the next few years. My old Dell laptop recently broke (literally) after 4 years of faithful service. So I'm in the market for something new. What would you recommend? I don't play video games or anything like that, so I don't really need a huge graphics package, but I do occasionally like to do some software development (as a hobby) and watch a DVD and/or play some music. So I need something that can handle those tasks with aplomb.

I'm tempted to transition from PC to Mac, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea; I've been informed that many law schools (and law is what I might end up studying) strongly recommend that students purchase PCs because students can't take exams on Macs or get access to other necessities like research services unless they have a PC. But quite frankly, I'm tired of playing the anti-virus/anti-spyware game with PCs, and the thought of having to go through that again is anathema to me.

get a mac. if you do need windows, you can always use bootcamp & run indows within a mac. that's the best of both worlds.

If your not into video games
mac is definitely the better choice

a Dell inspiration 9400 their great i have one

if all you did was multimedia editing, i would recommend mac, however, PC is good for everything else. i would recommend a media center laptop. preferably from acer or toshiba.

get the cheapest laptop you can find, like under $500. anything more is a waste. so many free email services offerering gigabytes of storage, no need to store much on your pc. if you get too many viruses or spyware, just reimage and start fresh. if it breaks, it was cheap so who cares.

A good laptop for Office and not too high advanced graphics applications(more exactly games) are the Toshiba L series laptops. If you want a more advanced system you may use Fujitsu Siemens AMILO series or Sony VAIO laptops. I would recommend you buying a Windows based laptop, because the majority of software runs on Windows, there are some for Mac too, but from my knowledge I know they are verry less.