My current Acer Vista notebook now is about 5 years old still works but...
In the future I had thought about upgrading to an i5 notebook with 6gig ram aprox, but I have no idea what I can get here for about 1k$
I have looked around but anything with an SSD drive is way more $ it seems.
5400 rpm hard drives suck and cause serious slow load & user times.
Dell XPS are cool but wow are they pricy, like $1500 + & up for a 15 inch but I am sure their HD screens are a thing of beauty.
I guess we are up to windows 8.1 now and I am not sure what OP system is best for note books. Maybe I should just buy a cheaper notebook & upgrade to an 256 gig SSD?
Any help appreciated ...me lost in this new world of stuff.

Pick a name brand. It doesn't matter who. It will either fail tomorrow, or 5 years down the road. At least go with the top 3. HP, IBM, Sony, ASUS, Alienware Toshiba etc etc. Not necessarily in that order. And get the extended no-question asked warranty. BestBuy is good for this.

Yes, IDE drives are slower than SATA, SATA is slower than SSD.

Apple PC'* are really only good for multimedia apps like video picture editing. You would have to use a 3rd party app to run PC apps on it.

Really, it boils down to WHAT you plan on using the 'computer' for. If your only doing simple stuff such as basic internet, email, weather youtube etc, a simple $400 setup will be fine. If your into extreme games, video editing, multitasking, than yea, your going to obviously spend more.

What do you want to do that causes your current unit to show its age?

It seems like 1st and second gen i5'* are coming off lease, and can be had dirt cheap. I just picked up an HP Compaq Elite 8300 desktop spec'ed with an i5-2500 (3.3ghzX4) for $300, and it can still do at least 80% (90% on numbers alone) of what the newest counterparts can.

I am also curious to see what windows 10 has to offer...

Does it have to be a Notebook?
If not for around a grand you can get a decent laptop that will handle a few games, of course you won't have them maxed out in graphical settings.
One brand often overlooked is Lenovo, they have some decent laptops for the money, of course I like ASUS and HP a bit more, here is a decent choice for the money.

Lenovo Y50 (59428533) Gaming Laptop Intel Core i5 4200H (2.80GHz) 8GB Memory 1TB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M 2GB 15.6" Windows 8.1 64-Bit - Newegg.ca

If you want in a week or two I can let you know how they perform, I have a friend that got one for coding, and taking notes in school, I am sure he'll try to play some games on it as well, he should have his any day now.

I do prefer a notebook as it has a keyboard, higher graphics capabilities and better processors.
My current Acer plays Call of Duty well, but the frame rate is not the best.
I would think a more modern processor/ram would do things all the way around better/quicker too.
Main use is office,photos, web stuff, gaming ya sometimes.
I may have to spend more to get a decent sized SSD drive though.
It also appears that the dvd drives have been removed as the new notebooks are much thinner.
Is USB 3.0 now standard in the new stuff? ....Will have to checkout Best Buy!

I am not an expert on the two, but I have always heard laptops are more powerful than notebooks.
From what you say your needs are it really sounds like a laptop would be the right choice.
Unless you are not trying to game on it at all.

Difference between Laptop and Notebook - Laptop vs Notebook

The laptops have more USB ports, so you could easily attach a regular keyboard and mouse if necessary.
With USB 2.0 vs 3.0, if you are connecting an additional SSD than I could see USB 3.0 as being better, but keyboards and mice are not going to have any difference with the two, as USB 2.0 still has enough speed to handle either.

If your only doing normal stuff on it, SSD may not be your best option. Remember, they are limited in storage space. You have to learn to control what is started at startup, your boot times can be very short.

And of course, the number of cores here is a big factor. My HP AMD Quad core which is just over a year old now, smokes the crap out of a desktop HP AMD dual core which is only a few months old.

This really is confusing looking at laptops or notebooks, whatever way they call them.
Which is Mobil quad cores ? i5- i7 is intel and AMD I have not researched yet. In mobil quad processors dont they suck up the battery power?
So far from what I can find, Dell in the 15.4" XPS line is the only manufacturer that offers a reg 1TB hard drive and an SSD 32GB, which I assume is for the operating system quick start ups.
This sounds like a balanced machine, but I will end up spending 2K+$ !
When I get some time in Dec, I will get off to Best Buy & see what they have and ask if any models offer both an SSD & Sata 5400rpm drive, & try & start from there.

AMD is about half the cost of Intel I5, I7 etc.

Mobile core processors are half the size of normal desktop processors but cost twice as much.

Notebooks are just some plain jane laptop with nothing special. Good for internet and that'* it.

Laptops are better than Notebooks.

Desktops are better than laptops because they are cheaper and are upgrade-able at the user level. Laptops, your stuck with what'* inside.

Again, you need to find out your priorities with the kind of computer your getting. SSD will only gain you a couple of seconds of seek time. But your also limited to size. Again, you need to figure what you want the system to do for you. If your only perusing the internet and doing email and weather and some documents, a $1000+ system isn't really worth it.