Right now 512 is fine for everyday use... in the future, you might want 1Gig, so if you're looking for somewhere to put your money, put it into RAM and get 1Gig
Marines920
dbhertz is right, check out http://www.powernotebooks.com/articles/Name_Brand.php3... it explains things fairly well there. You would be doing yourself a disservice by not considering some brands you don't hear of much...
The banias chip is probably not even available... if it is, go with dothan, it has twice the cache size which makes a difference. Take a look at http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2129&p=3 for more differences between...