When you work contract programming you get a pretty good idea of what not to buy by talking to the in-house guys who work for the Fortune 500 IT shops. They buy laptops a hundred at a time. The sales guys all wanted Sonys because they are super sleek and light, but for every hundred, they were sending 30 back and in the end they all died in year or so. The Dells are heavy laptops, but they are worth the exercise - hardly any of them go back - heck I got an 486 I still use, must be 10 years old. HP is about the same, but they seem to have more software problems, which are just phone call issues. I don't know much about the latest Gateways, the big companies are afraid they will go bankrupt so they aren't buying them.

The Apples are the best. They have the sleekness and the high quality, but man, a low end one will cost 3,000 bucks. You can pop 10 grand into one if you really soup one up. Sort of the AMG of the laptop world. Major executive status symbol now.