For what it's worth:
I'm a big fan of Toshiba Laptops (I have 4 total now) and I just bought a Toshiba L305-s5877 for the office. (I'm typing this reply on it.) It was only $649 (can be had for $599 at Circuit City and other places on sale). It is an Intel Centrino Dual Core processor running at 2 megahertz with 3 MB of memory and a 200 GB hard drive. A lot of power for the money yet you will need a new OS and possibly a longer life battery so total cost could be $600+$139+(battery)+169 (OS-cost estimated and could be less)
I just got it so I haven't used it in the office, yet some things I've observed are: battery life is not as good as on my Toshiba tablet PC's; it seems fast, and it runs cool (turned on and working for about 6 hours now and it is just warm to the touch). I only got 115 minutes this AM yet I was watching Olympic videos online. (The advertised battery life is 3 hours on the standard battery).
I looked at the ACER and Lenovo machines online, yet decided I wanted to buy through a retailer (I already had an unused operating system (Vista Ultimate)). However, I thought some of the Lenovo's were a good buy since they included XP Pro for not much money. I know ACER reportedly has a good reputation yet they used to be the low end machines so I still shy away from the brand. I don't care for HP laptops-they run hot and mine died a year ago when the AC adaptor plug failed.(HP desktops are great however). In a notebook I would stay with an Intel chip since I feel the Centrinos run much cooler than the AMD's.
