[Icemaster]

Having been playing the stereotypical IT geek road warrior for the last 4 years, here's what I've found - take it as feedback only and make your own decision:

Dell - Still my preference, however go with the Latitudes they are designed SPECIFICALLY for business portability, stay FAR away from the Inspiron's - home/consumer grade crap at best. NB - I'm currently on a Dell Latitude C640 (no longer made...) and am quite happy. BTW, I can always stick a second battery in the other bay without turning the unit off - gives me enough time to get from SF to Atlanta and then about another hour or two in the airport.

Toshiba - Sucks. Had three Tecra's, sent them all to the great hardware Recycle Bin in the sky. Poor construction, poor service history HORRIBLE about getting parts to me for repairs. Parts were always 4 week lead time - not a good thing if you need a new LCD or system board like now!!!

Compaq - Had a M700 and M300 and had excellant reliability, minor spotty problems, but might have been attributable to the dual-boot way I had them set up.

IBM - Tough as nails, but similar problems with parts, and very very moody. Seemed like the one I had was always PMS'ing or something.

Sony - Cool. A lot of bling-bling but pretty neat machines nonetheless. Not sure I'd spring for it if it were me though.


My advice get the best you can afford, you don't necessarily need the bleeding edge for mobility (Centrino processor) as you can always add a PC card to the unit.

Look for expandibility - some of them have expansion units (Compaq IBM) rather than bays (Dell) that you HAVE to have if you want to use the CD-ROM, floppy, or plug in an external mouse.

It's still a personal decision bottom line. What do need to have and what would you like vs. what can you afford...