If were going to buy another laptop, I would definitely go with a Toshiba or Asus. They seem to be top of the line right now. I do not care for HP or Acer. Almost every single person I know that has owned and HP or Acer has had a hardware problem within 2 years, about a third of which were major. As in motherboard, cpu or screen failed for no known reason. Dell, and Lenovo are decent in my opinion, but some people would refuse to buy either. Last time I checked, Sony's were more expensive than they were worth, but I don't hear too many complaints about them. I cannot comment too much on other brands, just because I don't have much experience with them.
As far as processors go, I've always preferred Intel. Which one depends on what you plan on doing. For light computer use, an i3; if your doing stuff that requires a lot of processing power, an i7; an i5 is somewhere in the middle.
