Quote Originally Posted by Mark B
Looking at the Dell Inspiron with 17 inch monitor for around $ 1,200.
I have the core duo with that 17" screen w/ the NVIDIA chip and I love it. I paid the premium of early adopters and don't have a ton of regret even now.

$1200 isn't bad at all.

Don't worry about Vista until it has been out for a year. XP is a fine OS for just about anything Windows can do. Vista doesn't really offer anything useful over XP unless you want to play those vista-only games Microsoft is talking about. Then again, don't listen to me - I don't use Windows.

You can also get a Macbook for that price, which is also a nice box but with a smaller screen and about 1/2 the weight and a much nicer OS. You can also dual-boot to Windows if you please on the intel-based macs.

Here's a link to the OS I run on my laptop, desktop, and servers:
http://www.ubuntu.com/