Dell over e-machines,ANY DAY EVERY DAY..That's my professional opinion, but I am only talking from 16 years of experience as a Sr. geek in an organization with more than 15,000 servers and workstations/laptops.. 90% of which are Dell. Dollar for Dollar they are the best systems available on the consumer market, especially for the light use you are talking about. Then again you might consider a Netbook of some sort if all you're looking for is web access.

but then again I'll pimp the laptops I've got for sale too .. 2 Dell D620's. Yeah they are a few years old, but they are less expensive than what you're going to pay new and have new batteries