I find the business traveller thing to be laughable. 99% of biz travellers use low spec high priced crap, and if it can run outlook and notes they are satisfied.

Just depends on what you do. My point was not whether people need the power or not (although as far as I can tell, just having a lot of IE or Firefox tabs open will occasionanally overwhelm anything single-core still on the market - and not at all unfrequently overwhelm the atom) but if you THINK you need the power, a higher clock Core 2 Duo is a bad value compared to an i5.

Taking an example I know professionally: as a Java developer, if I wanted to run a decent IDE with reasonably large projects on my laptop rather than remote desktop, I would need more power than any but the top of the lone C2Ds offer, and those are ridiculously non-cost-effective. The i5s get you a lot closer, a lot cheaper.

And yeah, most people - even power users - are going to use the full power of their machine a relatively small fraction of the time. But even if that's only 5%, that's 3 minutes every hour - if I spend that much time waiting for the machine to unfreeze, well, that may not have a real impact on my productivity, but it's certainly going to have an impact on how annoyed I get at the machine. Buying for the peaks during a regular workday makes sense to me, especially when the cost difference is relatively small - the jump from a single-core machine to a dual core (albeit often a Pentium Dual Core rather than a C2D) is rarely even $100.

My $0.02:
Go for a new Intel CULV processor laptop. They're cheap and way faster than an ATOM netbook.

Anandtech has a review of a couple of the choices:
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3735&p=1

Personally, I have an ASUS 1810TZ and am very satisfied.

I have an AS4810TZ and absolutely love it. The big battery saved me yesterday when I was flying ORD-LAX and my phone's battery was dead. Powered her up and picked up plenty of juice. Also, don't be scared of the processor speed. The 4 GB of RAM make it great at multitasking and it is plenty fast for someone like me who uses it to practice law, store music/photos and surf the web.

I'm easily getting over 6.5 hours of life out of my AS4810TZ in real world usage and it is a real laptop.

MacBook Pro 15"
 

Running the MB Pro with VMWare Fusion and Win 7 will give you all you want and have increased pleasure in the process. I went from moster Dells and IBM/Lenovo and have not had any problems in two years, somthing never true with any of the others. I find I'm using Windows Apps less and less because I keep finding Mac solutions, but this thing seems to run Win7 better than most original Win machines. I cannot explain that unless it is the placebo effect. If so so be it. I love my Mac's.

After the first year I replaced all the rest of the computers in the house with Macs. The Mac Mini, of which I have three, does a great job connecting with the MacBook and also runs Win apps just fine.

After I changed all that I find I'm having no more screens of death, no reboots, no need for antivirus (except on the Win side), and they were cheaper than the Win machines I usually bought.

Thinkpad T410s if you can afford it with 256 GB SSD with FDE from Toshiba. You need to get it as a service part as you can't configure it with the machine.

T400s if you are on a tighter budget, and if you are on a budget budget PC I'd get a 13.3 inch used X300.

I got this laptop for 1k pretty much tricked out back in January, 09. Just have to wait for the right deal. Haven't checked prices lately, but I will say that these 13.3" "business exec" model laptops are prob somewhat outdated now that there are so many cheap alternatives running around.

Edited for +1 for durability...I have absolutely abused this thing and it keeps ticking.

If going Levono check for Coupons
 

If you decide on a Lenovo wait for a holiday to purchase, they always have a sale around the holiday. Then search for Lenovo coupon codes you may find some that get you another 10 to 15% off the sale price (I did).

I used to have a Mac, but it seems silly to me to pay extra for Mac hardware to run windows as some have suggested. Why pay a premium for a Mac to run Windows, but if you decide to do that I would suggest Parallels you do not need VMWare unless you want to have both Os's available at the same time.

I have a Lenovo but if I were you I would be looking at the display make sure you like it. And I would try the keyboard make sure you like the spacing and the feel. Then I would get a machine with the I5 processor and at least 500GB HD. IMHO, SSD's still cost to much on a price per GB basis. With the Lenovo it is easy to have 2 HD's in the machine with a drive carry you can simply and easily switch between DVD drive and HD. (Currently I have a 640GB HD as my second drive.) Also, get 4 GB of Ram in 1 dimm if you can afford it, also you will need a 64 bit OS to take advantage of any ram over 3 GB.

True and you don't really have to wait for holidays - there seems to be a sale at Lenovo virtually all the time these days.

Slightly lower prices using the Shareholder program (you don't have to be a shareholder, just create an account for free): http://lenovo.com/spp

You will if you choose a ThinkPad T or X Series.

Agreed; my T500 I have on order has a 500GB HD. (I didn't go with the T510 because I'm invested in docking stations that aren't compatible with the T510 and I wanted to get a few more years out of them.)

This one area I'll disagree on - 4GB RAM on a single DIMM is hugely expensive compared to buying 4GB on two DIMMS. In a few years, if you really want to increase RAM, it'll probably be cheaper to buy 2x4GB DIMMs at that time, remove both old DIMMS, and sell 'em on eBay.

64-bit operating system: Absolutely get it; it's no additional charge and things will only move that way in the future. Only a very few legacy bits don't work on 64-bit - and us geeks handed that old stuff down to family long ago...didn't we? :D :D :D

Right now, in terms of capabilities, size, weight, etc. at this very moment this is the best deal on the planet:

http://www.jr.com/msi-microstar/pe/MSR_X400205US/

for $399 and free shipping!

I highly agree...the Lenovo ThinkPad series is bullet proof and weighs under 3lbs. The X200 is an update to the X60 (which I have owned for 2 1/2 years). If you go this route be sure to order the docking station which will tie in well with your 24" monitor and you can add an external keyboard (however, ThinkPads have the best keypads in the industry!

There's no one "best deal on the planet" for everybody, or even for most people.

Take the example above: it's a pretty good price on a pretty good brand, but it's a low-clocked Core Solo processor and as such it's nearing netbook levels of underpowered.

At the exact same price, Dell has two $399 models with a dual core processor, in a 15.6" or 13.3" screen. Both will have significantly worse battery life than the MSI, and the 15.6" is much chunkier - the 13" similar, albeit with a smaller screen. I'd suggest that many non-power-users are still reasonably impatient and would still be better served by one of those. Real power users are probably not going to want any of these.

Also, while you can argue that either a 13.3" or 14/14.1" screen is a pretty good compromise for most people, it's not going to be right for everyone - the first place people should start (IMO) is figuring out which size/form factor is right for them, and then work from there.

Aside: the move from 14.1/15.4" 16:10 to 14/15.6" 16:9 screens on consumer models has gotten pretty annoying, especially since there doesn't seem to be any equivalent of the higher-res 1440x900 screens that you could get on some 14.1" models, and "true HD 1920x1080" 15.6" models are uncommon and pricy.

But $200 for the docking station is ridiculous.

You're right.

nkedel, what part of "capabilities, size, weight, etc." did you not understand?