Notebook advice

The time has come to buy another notebook and sell off my desktop. As much as a have grown to love my desktop, I can't lug it around town with me any longer especially with the 21" monitor.

So, any manufacturers you would recommend, not recommend, or know of any good deals? I'm not looking to bust the bank, but do need reasonable performance. The catch is I'm in Canada, so chances are some major US manufacturers and dealers won't ship to me up here.

Btw, I still have an older CTX notebook which is 6 years old, but works like a charm (although can't use new apps on it). I'd be willing to try a lesser-known manufacturer if their quality is high, a la CTX.

Thanks!

Dell and IBM are known for the durability of there laptops so you might try that out. If you want awesome performance than I'd go with an Alienware but your taking major $$$. There's another brand that I've seen in this forum but can't remember what it is that some of the guys have raved over. They'll probably be able to tell you.

My first choice would be IBM.

I bought a Sharp ultraportable w/ Athlon XPM chip and love it! No problems, loaded with features, and nice and small :D It was identical to or better than the comparable IBM models I looked at and several hundred bucks cheaper. I'd highly recommend whatever you buy, go with the Athlon XP-M chip, as the pricing is so much better than Intel's monopolistic pricing.

IBM, Toshiba-I have been okay with both.

Ironically, my present Toshiba is in the shop now for a problem, and this brings me to my stock and standard advice on laptops.

Whatever you get, pay attention to the warranty, because working on it yourself is often just not possible. If you buy a pricey enough machine to get a 3 year warranty, great. If not, look into doing what you can to be able to be covered for at least two years. The manufacturer may sell an extended warranty (don't go with a store warranty-stick with the manufacturer). Also, some credit cards have a buyer protection program that will double a manufacturer's warranty up to a year-for instance, American Express does-and they work. Ask your card company.

I try to stay covered until I figure that the machine is pretty obsolete. By that time, the cost of the repair is likely to far exceed the value of the machine.

A little off topic, I guess...

Had a Dell Latitude that the keys would not work in the middle of the keyboard - if you "bent" the keyboard inward, they would work. Upgraded to an IBM T30 and love it.

Good experiences with Toshiba and Compaq(now HP).

I've been a die-hard AMD fan since their 486s way back in the day. I've been trying to find some xp-m-based notebooks but so far not much is coming up. Searching on AMD's website for manufacturers is completely useless, there's only a few names that pop up and some of them only make desktops, so it's beyond me ;)

I was considering going with Intel for the first time, but as mentioned, the prices are just too high, needlessly too high. I also ran into www.eurocom.ca , a Canadian notebook company that sells 'upgradable' notebooks at decent prices, but only with Intel chips. Any of you have experience with them?

Acer, HP, Compaq, Sharp, IPC and Fujitsu make Athlon XP-M laptops. Intel used their monopolistic club to force some of the other OEMs to go exclusively intel :(

I've got a Sharp Actius AV18 (PC-AV18)- ultraportable with Athlon XP-M 1800+, and an internal DVD/CD-RW combo which really surprised me in a 4lb ultraportable this thin :D $1200