Imrik, you have great taste (given). I'm also looking at the Sony FS series. Or if somehow i can get it to the states for cheap, definitely the Samsung x50.
What kind of price range are you looking at? I picked up a Dell Inspiron 9300 for a HUGE discount when I found an online coupon for $750 off. They also offer 40% off deals a lot. It has worked flawlessly since the day it arrived, and I highly recommend it. It really depends on what kind of laptop you are looking for, though. The I9300 is really a desktop replacement (I bought it for gaming) and the battery life is not that great, so I don't really have all that much portability.
You should check out www.notebookreview.com, too. They have lots of reviews (duh) but they also post coupons and other offers from the major manufacturers from time to time.
Definitely BYO desktop. Sure, it might be a little bit more expensive, but you're assured that you will have what you need. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you choose to build your own desktop make sure you buy the right parts and assemble it in as near a static free enviornment as possible. I would recommend an AMD X2 4200+ or better with an ASUS K8N Neo4 Ultra or platinum mobo with SLI. 2x-4x Corsair xms DDR400 1GB paired SDRAM and two XFX 7800 cards in SLI. With a 74GB 10K system drive on SATA2 and at least one 250GB 72OO storage drive on SATA. Liquid cooling case from Koolermaster with CPU, GPU, mobo, and harddrive cooling. That would be one hell of a nice PC. and don't worry about windows vista. Just use Linux or MAC OS distro for PC.
i'm about to buy a powerbook this week but im having second thoughts. I'm going with it because of its sexyness but also its capability with art, design, and music. The bad thing is that they're kind of overpriced for what you get. Any other vios or samsungs that can compare to the performance you get with a powerbook?
my sony fs660 gets about 3.5 hours on a full charge with the backlight on half intensity, so it's pretty good. it has a 15.4" screen and i'm using the 802.11g the whole time, so i'm satisfied. not too sure about powerbooks, but i've heard iBooks get something like 5-6 hours, which is pretty damn good.
but i guess it just depends on what you're going to use it for. check out this site for some reviews and stuff about apple notebooks (and other brands too):
