Well after doing a good bit of research I finally decided to go with an Apple laptop.  Thanks to everyone who gave me input about what to get and not to get (particularly Adam, the ultimate Apple champion).  I ended up with a refurbished Powerbook (15 inch, 1.5 gig combo drive, 512MB DDR333 SDRAM, 80GB Hard Drive, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (64 MB ( Read more... )