Ended up purchasing a 15" Toshiba Satellite model yesterday. Upgraded to Windows 8.1 last night. It's been an interesting experience. The model has a touch screen, which is really nice, and fairly intuitive. The OS as a whole is going to take me quite a while to get used to. I've had a few frustrations already. Can't get my HP Bluetooth mouse to connect, for whatever reason, even though the laptop detects it. Also, the Windows Store wouldn't work for me at all. I searched online, and was apparently supposed to do a bunch of command prompt "stuff", which is just utterly ridiculous in 2014. The average person is going to have no way to figure any of that out. The Windows Store now works for me, after a random number of restarts. Can finally download apps like Facebook, Twitter, etc. I'll let you all know random further thoughts later.