What type of Laptop Computer is the best bang for your buck?
I don't need all the bells and whistles that double the price, but I don't want some cheap piece of junk either.
Dells seem to work great up until a certain point, at which time everything just kinda goes to Hell all at once.
The question is really what you want it to do...
Is it a glorified dumb terminal for getting online? Do you have specialized applications (for work or otherwise) that you need to run on it? Will it be used for any "power user" type tasks, like video/photo editing, etc?
A lot of people will disagree, but for basic ability to get online I'd look at a nicer chromebook before looking at a low-end Windows notebook. If you want "bang for your buck", it's a very lightweight OS so you don't need tons of RAM or processing power (or storage). Battery life is typically really good as well. But... It's very limited in what it can do. If everything you do can be done via the browser [which is increasingly common], it's great. If you want it to do anything else, it's not.
Beyond that I can't tell you much about brand. What I will say is this: don't cheap out on RAM [I'd prioritize the spend there over processor], and make sure you get an SSD rather than HDD. Most people don't need more than say 128GB storage, so a 128GB SSD will be a MUCH better user experience than a 1TB HDD. Once you get past the basic specs, you're looking at form factor (do you want something ultra thin and light--which you pay for), screen size, battery life, etc.
Now, if you're a power user, you'll need a lot more. But most power users aren't asking this question, so I'm guessing it's more of a simple "I need a computer to run a few applications and get online" question, in which case you can get by with less.