New Laptop

Mai-Kero

So my girlfriend's laptop's motherboard just died, which means she needs a new one. She bought her last one refurbished, which I think was a mistake since it didn't come with a warranty and whoop whoop whoop now it's dead six months later.

I'm going to run the idea of an EEePC 1000HE, or whichever one has the monstrous battery life, but I don't think she'll go for it since the laptop will be her primary computer, and she's going to want a larger screen.

Is there any advice as to which brand/make/model to go for? She probably wants to spend around $500, but will likely be able to go a bit further since she has a ton of money saved up for school-related expensive. Speaking of, this will be primarily for college, and she's in a lot of courses that use Creative Suite and 3DsMax (although I heard there's something a lot better for 3D modeling called Blender, true or false?), what kind of hardware should we be looking for?

Dark Shroud

You should be able to find a laptop with a duel core CPU in that price range. Remember you can always insteall more memory yourself for much cheaper. If this is going to be used for college you're going to want at least 15" screen. Those eeePCs don't cut it for working long periods.

Edit:

Okay here are two good ones if she's willing to up her price a little bit:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834146556
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115538