Hey I love this post. This has slowly solved a lot of my problems in my research for a different laptop. I currently use an Alienware Sentia 3450. I've been having troubles with it (only owned for about 2 weeks). The CPU fan is just so loud. It seems to constantly spin on high (when I'm running nothing more than a word document or even nothing at all), and when I am in class, my professor gives me funny looks

. So I've been on the phone with them for hours and they keep telling me to spray it with a can of air.

. That and the fact that I didn't realize how poorly the Accelerator 945 would perform on games. Shoulda done my research.
But anyway. I have been looking at some other laptops and I have come down to two that I might be looking at:
Dell M1210(12.1'') or the SonySZ (13.3'')
I have some questions:
1) The Dell I hear is pretty thick. How thick is it really? I've seen some compact and small 12'' Dell's and I don't think it's too bad, but then again this one has it's own GPU. So I was just curious as to the size.
2) The Sony (just one of the general, comparable 13.3'' SZ's, there's so many I get confused haha) I heard has a really loud fan (problem which I am NOT going to deal with again haha). Is it that loud? My hallmate has one and I don't think his fan is loud at all. In fact it's near silent. Is that just a few of the fans or are all of the fans "loud"?
Just in general, what are the true pros and cons? I've read plenty of the other threads, but they all seem to contradict each other. You seem to know what you are talking about so if there are any pointers, what could you give me as a comparison for the two? If you could give me some more suggestions as to other laptops that would be great too. The specs I usually look for are 1.83-2.0ghz duo, 1024ram, harddrive doesn't really matter,but the screen I don't really want to be more than 14ish, maybe 15ish at most. Pricing around 1600-1900 is also preferred. If you could give me some more suggestions as to other laptops that would be great.
Thanks again.
Chris