I've been thoroughly pleased with the HP Pavilion ZT3000 laptop I bought back in the summer of 2004. Paid just north of $4k. 1.6Ghz Centrino with 2 Gb of Ram, HUGE 60Gb HDD and 15.4 widescreen. Added a 24" Dell LCD to extend the desktop later on. This setup has been pretty nice.

Only mishap was me spilling an entire cup of coffee in it - the only casualty was the HDD. So that got upgraded to a 120Gb along the way.

About 3 weeks ago, the display quits - if figure it was the display inverter (on my 2nd), so I promptly buy one on eBay. $9 part, $29 for next day shipping... Replace it and no improvement. Must be the LCD tube - I bought one a long time ago but can't find it. I've been able to use my external monitor, so no big shake until I need to take it with me...

Impending vacation at the beginning of August made me pull the trigger on a new lappy so I have it with me to go away. Even in this age of low priced laptops, I still managed to spend $3300.

The new horse will be here July 22nd - HP Envy 15 - Intel i7-820QM, 16Gb RAM, dual Intel 160Gb SSD's, 15" widescreen, 1Gb ATI 5830, etc. All the goodies... Also getting a 27" external since my 24" doesn't have HDMI in and that's all the Envy has for external monitor output - plus the 24 is the wrong a/r (seemed like a plausible excuse at the time).

Can't wait!! (Sad I know, I never used to get excited about getting a computer...)