My wife would like a laptop so she doesn't have to sit at the desktop to surf. Have hald-held devices made laptops obsolete? What would be a good choice? Who makes the best ones these days? Thanks.if just for surfing then a TABLET device may be the way to GO...
Quite cheap, and the portability is great for them... Not great for much else... Laptops are by no way near obsolete yet they are just overkill for most people uses. Any laptop should do and if it is just for surfing I would just look out for something with about a GB of RAM, built in wifi, quite small and reasonable battery life (8ish hours)My HP laptop is going on 6 years OLD and have never had a problem with it. It is the main computer in the house, and has done very well for me.
I bought my wife a net book at Costco, and it works just fine for her and her internet surfing.
Good luck with your purchase. Artbuc,

For use to give you some reasonable recommendations we will need a little bit more info.

1. What all other then "surfing" would your wife like to do with the laptop?
2. Is size important? Would a 10" netbook work or does she prefer a 17" screen?
3. Will it need wireless or will she still use a cable to connect to the net? This may seem like a silly question but I know plenty of people that use laptops and never use the wireless function on it.
4. What price range are you looking at?
5. Where are you from? Don't need exact address on this but we have members from all over the world so it would do no good to get suggested a laptop in the U.K. if you live in the U.S.