Topic.

I looked at Dell and messed with their 2nd most powerful laptop (I like top-of-the-line hardware. Saves spending a fortune on upgrades for awhile). The ending cost was well over $7,000.00 US, which I thought was insane. 4GB RAM with a Intel Duo 2.16GHz seems extremly high.

I looked at HP, and messed around with their big laptop, and got it up to 100 GB 7200 RPM HDD, 2GB RAM, Duo 2.16GHz. About the same with less RAM.

Before I decided which I wanted to start saving for, I wanted to see what all else there might be out there.

P.S. Take a look at Dells new laptop. Its a litteral portable desktop. 21.5 inch screen, 7 speakers, probably no battery life, but still o.o The keyboard comes off, and its supposedly a laptop. Its, interesting to say the least...

Look at generic laptops ... Any top of the line Dell, HP, etc. will have way too much proprietary hardware to integrate smoothly with Linux. Give it 6 months, and Linux will probably have caught up. By then you may need to replace a cd-rom or something. You will only be able to get it from the manufacturer, and you will pay dearly.

Many companies make generic computers with only slightly less than bleeding edge hardware. That 'slightly' makes a big difference when you're trying to get it to work with Linux. As an example, look at PC Club's Encore line. I'm not really recommending them, but since they have a local store in my town, I have installed Debian on two of their laptops. Both worked out-of-the-box with only very minimal tweaking.

You mean by proprietary, that they contina hardware made by the laptops manufacturer, or that they contain hardware from someone like Intel or GeForce?