JK,

>As to which laptop, let me clue you in on one major drawback I have found to recent models: The touchpad mouse in front of the keyboard. Whoever thought this was a good idea was smoking dope. What happens is that your thumb drags across it ...

Amen, brother. Big time-waster to correct unintentionally changed stuff. Even bigger problem if you don't notice that you just changed something. Any typos in CoDe Mag that slipped past the copy editor can be blamed on that. :-)