Not bad, but how is their support now? If you have any issues, does it take forever to get through their phone support. It's not like you can drive to their store anymore.

Guess it's a dressed up eMachines laptop

How much does this one weigh?

The 512MB memory is 2 256MB cards, so you have to basically start from scratch when upgrading. Kinda cheesy.

I'm trying to decide what brand of laptop to get. Any suggestions?

#5, decide what kind hardware you want/need, then shop price, then brand. I haven't seen any good evidence that any brand is better or worse than another, aside from the anecdotal stuff that you'll find all over the place here. What kind of user are you and how much do you want your notebook to do? I've posted a link to a pretty useful guide before:
http://asia.cnet.com/buyingguides/notebooks/
which might be of help. Good luck!