Calling all programmers! - Notebook recommendations please

Sounds like you need an onsite next day warranty...so that means IBM or Dell....

IBM and Apple would probably give you the best support and warranty. As for DeLL, unless you are getting it through your company, don't expect to get their legendary service of several years ago - they seem to have kept it for their corporate customers ONLY.
I also wanted to try something new and ended up buying an Asus M6N laptop from discountlaptops. The lappy is manufactured by Asus but is built from barebone by ChemUSA as the ChemBook 2060E.
So far I have had only excellent service from them although, thank god, I have never had to ship my laptop back to them and wait for them to fix it or replace it.

EDIT: IMO, the Asus M6N is the perfect blend of power and mobility - it got the highest ever WorldBench 5 (98) score for a laptop tested by PCWorld (they tested a laptop built by PoluWell(?) - and has the battery life of an ultraportable laptop. I believe it is a great laptop for a programmer like you.

IBM if you can, Dell or Gateway otherwise.

I too agree that you should go with IBM. Their quality is superb and their warranty is outstanding as well. For somebody that needs reliability and quality, you cant really go wrong with IBM.

As a fellow developer, the 2 features I've really appreciated in a laptop are:

1) fast hard drive
So many development tasks involve IO that I really noticed the jump moving from a 4200rpm drive to a 7200rpm drive. It really is like night and day - compiles and database access are really a lot quicker.

2) screen real estate. Moving from 1024x768 to 1600x1200 is another godsend. Now I run 1600x1200 on a secondary monitor as well, giving me 3200x1200 effective resolution. IT's hard to go back to one screen after experiencing this setup.

So find a manufacturer that meets your support needs, but look for these features.

-Peter

My Two Cents

I am also a programmer. I do alot of visual studio development as well as some web development with dreamweaver. Currently I am doing some COBOL development for a class I am taking.

I would like to throw an alternative option out there to compete witht the IBM model as I looked at that as well.

Toshiba Tecra M2 is a good choice.

Very comparable to the IBM t42 and has good build quality and great service from a respectable company.

I get about 4 hours of battery life when doing web development and about 3 hours when using visual studio as it is more processor intensive when building projects and compiling programs.

It is just under 5lbs, has a good screen, great build quality and ascetics, and a ton of available options.

Most people knock this model because of xga screen and slow hard drive but they fail to go to toshibas website and custom config their own model. You can custom config this model anyway you want (Sxga screen, larger battery, 7200 rpm harddrive, etc...)

Also this comes with a fairly decent graphics card that I consider better than the one in the IBM model. It plays all the games I own (except for doom 3 smoothly on high settings)

Anyways check my signature below for the specs on my model.

I have been very please and have not had 1 minute of trouble or downtime since I have owned it. (I even dropped it from about two feet off of the floor with no problems.. LOL im so stupid)

HP Compaq nc8000 and HP Compaq nw8000 are good choices too.

My suggestion: IBM. Great build quality.

To make my point, here is something that I heard many years ago: "There were two companies competing for distribution to a firm. One day, company A stated they now had a $10 insurance on their producct. The firm inquires about this to company B, asking why they do not have insurance. Company B responds that their product is so superior to Company A's that they have absolutely no need for insurance."

To relate this: Company A = Dell Company B = IBM

Go IBM .