Well now that I'll be moving onto graduate school (Yey, getting my Ph.D.!!) It's looking like I'm going to have to sell off my big 1.2Ghz rig and settle into a nice laptop. I have a pretty good idea as to what I want, (specs below) at the moment I'm just looking for a good place to purchase it. If anyone knows of good online sites to purchase notebooks from let me know. I've been going directly to the retailers sites but I've been told you can get lower prices in other places online.

What I need:
Speed: ~1Ghz
Ram: >256MB
Hard Drive: >25GB
Onboard modem and ethernet
Onboard DVD CD-RW
Uses: Data manipulation/storage for school/work, Some mid-range gaming, DVD hookup to tv
Budget: $1200-1400 (i.e. whatever I can sell off my system(s) for)

I've been looking at the Dell Inspirion (8100) and Sony VIAOs....

There's been a bit of posting about notebooks, & I mentioned the Sony Viao as a good bargain in one. http://www.sonystyle.com/vaio/fxaseries/index.shtml
Dells are manufactured by Quanta Computer (Taiwan)

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Subject> Dell, Laptop etc.
Portable Computing > Questions about Buying a Laptop?
http://www.3dspotlight.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=242&highlight=laptop

3DS Price Grabber

It's hard to beat the big chain retailers on prices, due to the shipping weight of laptops.
CompUSA, BestBuy, CircuitCity are always running adds

www.dell.com have some good offers on at the moment.
Not sure of any particularly good online shops that specialize in laptop sales. I've used Dell laptops for about 4 years now and the build quality is good. The keyboard on this Inspiron is much nicer to work on than Asus and Fujitsu notebooks (which I have also used).

You could check www.resellerratings.com

Their top rated reseller at the moment is Powernotebooks which has a rating of 10 by many users.

You cant beat the prices right now on Gateway's laptops. Their 9550 series is their best one and the price is really good. I have one and it is one of the best investments I have ever made.