What part of 'There's no one "best deal on the planet" for everybody' do you not understand?

The value of any particular balance of "capabilities, size, weight, etc" is very much a matter of individual needs - and individual budget. And at the $399 price, there's going to be a lot of compromising going on with any machine.

could not agree more but I adore being able to dock my laptop in my home office & get onto the larger monitor, keyboard. So it is $ I'll spend.

From my personal experience, I've had two Lenovo thinkpad's crash in less than a year, so I don't believe I'll consider them in the future.

IIRC, Mac doesn't have a docking station so they are out for me.

Which I guess leaves most of the usual suspects to choose from.
I primarily use my laptop for email, excel, powerpoint.

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I know several people, including me that either sometimes or always plug their Macs into external keyboards and monitors (26 inch NEC int case). I have never understood why anyone would pay any price at all for a docking station. I have a keyboard with a trackball plugged into it (USB). I then plug the keyboard t
into the Mac via USB and the monitor into the monitor out port on the Mac. Done. I hav always thought docking stations were gimmicks to be honest.

To be fair, the machine hfly posted about does seem to meet the basic requirements set by the OP. I have about the same requirements, only I'm looking for a secondary machine to carry on a trip to Asia along with my 5 lb. company-issued HP/Compaq to keep business and personal things separate.

My home machine is a MacBook with a 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB of SDRAM. Since that has all of my personal things on it, I'd rather not haul that along overseas. Shopping for a Windows laptop is foreign territory.

What kind of compromising would I be facing with the MSI vs. a Duo CPU if I only wanted to run Firefox for Gmail and general browsing, OpenOffice, plus loading its 320GB HD with entertainment to watch en route on the plane?

None whatsoever as this machine would exceed all those criteria. I have one and I have to say that while sceptical when I got it, I am incredbly pleased with it and I paid about $90 more at the time. I should add that the J&R model is with the larger batery, a bit heavier, but I am getting about 9 hours out of it with regular use.

Quick follow-up question.

Windows 7 appears to be pre-loaded on the MSI. True? If so, does it come with a system disk as well, or would I need to configure some sort of backup for it in case I'd need/want to reload Windows at some point?

We kind of agree
 

You are correct 4GB DIMM's can be expensive especially on the Lenovo site. I actually got my T500 with 2GB becasue of this. I recently added a 4GB DIMM for a total of 6GB, for a lot less than I would have paid Lenovo. They seem to be very proud of their memory.:D

I love Lenovo T5XX or HP EliteBook.

Having just set up a machine with a comparable CPU to be recycled by a friend, I'd say it totally depends on your patience level. It'll do everything most people need to do - just a bit too slowly for my taste... especially when doing more than one thing at once, or with a lot of documents/tabs in the background to backtrack through. Load times for large PDF files would be another example of something that will totally depend on your patience level.

It's not quite apples-to-apples, since the one I'm passing in is a top-of-the-line CPU from 4 1/2 years ago (Pentium M 2.2ghz) but the passmark scores are slightly higher on the P-M and they're both single core. The disk should be a good bit faster in the new one, and ditto the GPU if you do any casual gaming or want to run Aero on Win 7.

How about some updates to this thread, please.

Always loved Lenovo but just got a new Toshiba R700 from work and it's a great piece of kit. I've got the model with SSD hard drive, it's quick, really light and feels solid. Built in 3G as well. Worth checking out, it's my new favourite, only thing I prefer on the Lenovo was the keyboard.

My only real update is that if you're a serious power user and looking for a lot of machine performance, wait a couple of months. The Intel i3/i5/i7 -2xxx series using the "Sandy Bridge" core are right around the corner, and they're going to be a big improvement in what's available in high-end laptops.

For most people, I'd still suggest that anything in a 2ghz+ Core 2 Duo equivalent is going to be fine for general use, and that's mostly true for the Pentium Dual Core and AMD models as well (the main sacrifices there are at the high end and in terms of battery life.

Single-core processors whether Atom, AMD or Core 2 Solo, regardless of speed, are best avoided for all but the lightest use.

Dual core processors under 2ghz (whether Core 2, Core i3, Pentium Dual Core, AMD or Atom) are OK for light use as long as you're patient.

There are two exceptions to the last:
1) the i5/i7 ULV dual core chips, which have nominal speeds under 2ghz, are fine for most use as (A) they're a good chunk faster than Core 2s at a given clock speed, and (B) the "turbo" feature allows them to run at higher then their nominal clocks speeds when cool and/or only using one core for long enough that most people's "bursty" use will feel like a much faster chip.

2) the i7 quad core mobile chips have nominal clock speeds under 2ghz, but with "turbo" are really fast if you're not using all four cores at once (on the far size of 3ghz on one core, or 2.5ghz on two.) They're still not a very good general choice - for most people, a fast dual core (i5-560m or i7-620m/640m) will be just as good, but if you need the quad core, you'll know. Of course, if you need the quad core, you're exactly who my initial advice to wait for the "Sandy Bridge" models applies to :)

This has me concerned because I am looking for a new laptop and as you surely know, this is a purchase that generally lasts three years or so.

Can you say something more about this "Sandy Bridge" chip? Who will be the launch customer in laptops? Can I expect a "corporate" style laptop like a Lenovo T-510 to have these chips?

I am definitely NOT a power user.

I really like the new Inspiron 13's!

Intel Core I3 (they are as fast as the I5)
4GB+ Ram