I'm getting my wife a laptop. She doesn't want me to spend too much. I'm thinking around $1,000 - $1,400. Here is what I know:

It must have a AMD 64 or AMD 64 Turion in it as I want it to be able to run 64 bit applications in 3 years.

I want it to have a 17" screen though she says she doesn't care.

The touch pad needs to be centered under the keyboard where your wrist lay.

Battery life is not an issue as it will be plugged in usually.

It can't be a Dell as Dell doesn't use AMD processors and thus no known Dell laptop to this day could ever possible run a 64bit program. (Is that right?)

I hate Gateways.

I hate HP (Compaq) even more almost.

Acer, Fujitsu, Sony and Toshiba seem to be about all that is left.

Any suggestions?

How soon does have to be? If you can wait until the end of the month, I should have my new system installed and operational. I can give you a complete report on its reliability. In the mean time, will something like this suit you?

http://www.cyberpowersystem.com/system/ ... 00.asp?v=d

Toshiba has an excellent reliability rating by Consumers Union in all their other electronic products. Find out if they build their laptops themselves. If they don't just rebadge someone else's laptops as their own ( a common occurance, I've read ) then a Toshiba laptop should be quite reliable.

Is this for her or you?

Gonna make me do some homework, eh.

Will research and let you know.

*EDIT*
You are correct. Intel Centrino processors are 32 bit only. 64 bit is expected during the second half of 2006.
Also, I have looked on Toshiba's site and found only Intel processors. Where are the Turion 64 models?

The deal breaker is the 17" screen. I can not find one anywhere for your price range.

Well, I'm a damn liar it appears. I got the machine tonight and I didn't go with many of the required specs I mentioned above. I will get it going then post what I ended up with. I like what my wife agreed to get but it's still in the box as I'm fixing 2 other people's computers before I sit down to set up hers. I'm excited so far but we'll see. Stop doing homework for me as it is too late. Thank you for your input, especially you Mortis though your solution was not chosen. Later!

fess up -- you bought a mac ...

What about a Lap Dance for the Hubbies.

You got to have priorities

So here is what I got and let me say that the picture does zero justice as it is actually a very attractive laptop.

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/HP-Pavil ... tDetail.do

It is an HP Laptop. It has a Turion64 2Ghz processor. It has 100GB hard drive. It has 1GB 2700 DDR ram. It has a wide screen for the DVD movies (15.4 in). It came with Windows XP Media Edition OS. It has built in lan and wireless lan network cards. It has an 8X DVD Reader/Burner w/ lightscribe, CD Rom Reader/Burner. It has tons of expansion ports, media card readers, USB2 ports, a firewire port, TV out port, 56k modem, and finally it has a Radeon Express 200M video card that produces right at 100FPS while playing UT and looks great!

This second. I am very happy with the purchase. My wife loves it.

Dude. that is one cool notebook.
Just one thing... I thought you hated HP??
Oh, and another. Let me know how you like the Lightscribe. I have been considering getting that, but I wanna know that it is worth it.

Yeah, ido hate HP because they are Compaq. I hate Compaq because they became so propietary that they became a total pain to work on and their system software sucked. Well, now Dell is doing the same. Mac has done the same forever but at least they have great software and hardware.

Then it hit me. Laptops are all proprietary. It was this or an Acer Laptop that also seemed pretty cool but I at least know my enemy being HP. I don't know a thing about Acer. Overall, I had wanted a Toshiba but I coudn't find one that had evertyhting the way I wanted it. I can already tell you that light scribe is cool. It is pretty easy to do and is much better than CD stickers and all of that. For those of you who don't know, what it does is etch a picture of anything you want onto a CD. It is black and white and looks like greyscale. It is permanant and looks totally professional as it is actually. Have a CD of music for the wife....just light scribe her picture on it and never guess what that cd is again.

Yep, I will probably get one of those things in the future... The drive, not the notebook.
Overall, is the system blazingly fast? Also, is the Media Center Edition of Windows 64 bit?

Actually, Idon't think it is 64 bit. I will have to look into that though. It is about as fast as my XP2600 which makes sense because they are both clocked at 2000mhz. Nothing shocking about the speed. Just good and fast.

Actually, I am a little dissapointed that it is not faster. Still, I have to keep in mind that it probably has a 4200 rpm hard disk, also, the RAM is not DDR 400, but DDR 333.
So in reality, this thing is really a horse. It is just pulling a heavy burden.