>What do you like in the lap-top market? I realized recently that if you add the cost of a flat-screen monitor (healthier) to the cost of a desktop you can afford a pretty nice lap-top. (And get a UPS as well.)
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Toshiba and IBM have both produced consistently excellent product at a price. I also like the Dell Inspirons. I own an AST mini-notebook; I have plenty of desktop machines with nices screens, and only need the laptop when travelling, so I spent ~$800 on the AST 280 (equivalent to a 200MHz Pentium MMX with 32MB of RAM and 2GB drive) for travel, mostly to pull email and log onto LANs at clients sites to copy off stuff to take home and work on with dual-processor boxes with serious disk drives and ViewSonic PS-790 monitors at home and the office. The AST weighs in at 3lbs. The UPS I use for most of my hoome systems weigh about 10x that...

>I would want a machine that didn't make me yearn for a desktop.
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Peter, for $2K I can get a Pentium III 500 or better with a 19" monitor, and spend less than $3K for a Pentium III 700 with a 21" monitor. I like full sized keyboards, and like the MS Wheel rats, and would not give up my 19" monitor running at 1280x1024 comfortably without having someone hold a gun to my head (and even then, it'd better be better than a li'l old .25 or I'll take the risk.) The flat panel displays are nice, but pricey, and don't offer the option to go above the 1024x768 resolution without spending more for the monitor than I'd spend on the 700MHz system mentioned above. The current sub-3K systems are at best mobile Pentium IIs at ~400MHz (most are down at 366MHz, or use the AMD K6/2-3D. I hate the keyboards of almost every laptop I've ever used, with the exception of the IBMs that had the "butterfly" keyboards, which are expensive in and of themselves. If you have $4K to spend, get a $2K-2.5K desktop system and a $1K-$2K (there are good buys in the $1100-1300 range) laptop, and network them.