We have a Sony Vaio laptop with a Sata hard drive (real fast data transfer and processing speeds). Paired with a e-Sata (external hard drive) 2 TB, it is super fast as far as saving, storing and viewing pictures and videos. If you just surf the net, ie.. check e-mail, online banking, etc.. the new chromebooks are the new rage. We just picked one up for $300, that is the high end, and we love it. It just allows you to access anything you need to do on the internet. The kids can do homework on it as they save their docs from school to their google cloud account. You can get a chrome book for as little as $150. USB 3 is the new high speed data transfer standard that you might think about when buying a new computing device. You have to pair this standard with another USB 3 device(external hard drive) to benefit from this higher speed.