My desktop pc was overcome with a virus last week. Long story short, after 6 days/nights of effort, the hard drive is shot. I tried reinstalling Windows, but it would not do it. Tried reformatting the C:/ drive with no success. Talked to McAfee, Dell and Microsoft. Nothing worked. What irks me is that my McAfee is up-to-date and this virus still got through.

I may spend $75 and get a new hard drive just to keep the pc for my kids. But my wife wants a laptop for the convenience.

I know very little about good features for a laptop. Basically I want to use it for MS Office, internet, music files, photos. Any suggestions on hard drive size, brands you recommend (or to avoid), etc would be appreciated. I'm thinking of sticking with Dell, but am not definite.