>Those are the ones I recommended since Maximo's firm is 'married' to Dell. ;)

Well that would certianly make a difference. One good thing I can say about dell laptops (having had a few) .. is that they are durable. I had one for over 3 years that I took to the beach with me everyday...got sand all over it all the time..heck I dropped it twice and kicked it off a table by mistake once too. Darn thing still worked. Eventually the DVD went out..the keyboard started having issues...1 usb fried, then the other. Lost a HD on it once too...BUT considering the massive amount of abuse the poor thing took...it really held together well. Any other machine would of been lucky to make it 3 weeks let alone 3 years..hahaha