Buying a laptop...suggestions?

[Bash]

Hey all,

I'm looking to spend around $2000 on a laptop. Do you have any recommendations? Any brands to avoid?

A friend of mine has a Dell Inspiron 8000 w/ 15" UXGA + Geforce2Go which seems quite nice, but it's HUGE. I've also looked at the ultra portable end of the spectrum. Ultra portables like the Dell Inspiron 2100 & Toshiba Portege are cute, but I'm worried that they will barely meet the minimum requirements to run software in 6 months. Specifically, the Dell has a 4MB Rage Mobility and 256MB max ram. The Toshiba has a 8MB Savage IX & max of 256MB ram. Do you think Win XP would run well on a P3-700, 256MB, 4mb Vram?

Thanks in advance,
Bash

[jkresh]

Ultra portables will be fine for some time as long as you can upgrade the memory to 512 and don’t care about games.

[Grimwolf]

Check out the Toshiba 3005-S303. It has a P III 850, 20GB HD, 128MB standard, A DVD/CDRW drive, the Geforce2 go w/16MB od DDR RAM, and a 14.1 inch screen.

Its a modular notbook, so the DVD/CDRW and floppy share the same bay and must be switched out, but this also makes the laptop lighter(around 5.5 lbs instead of 7.5-8 lbs).

This would be a great bet for good performance and low weight, and best of all it retails for around $1700.

Grimwolf