I have new Acer Aspire 5040 WLmI laptop. It's a slim sleek laptop. AMD Turion 64 and have ATI Radeon x200 chipsets. 512mb SODIMM memory. It only have 4 USB 2.0 jacks, 1 PCMCIA type II slot, and 1 SVGA monitor jack, and phone modem jack and Gigabyte LAN jack. Wireless 54G b/g Athero adapter card built into it (called Mini PCI card and it's removeable!). Have Slimdrive Doubleside DVD RW drive. 15 inches WXGA wide screen. I got it free from my friend for selling couple of item in Ebay for him. It's pretty handy laptop for my use.
Dell Laptops are good, so does HP Pavilion laptop. I don't like Compaq Presario! I've tested few of those laptops before I sold it in Ebay (most Laptops are refurbished). HP Pavilion are pretty thick laptop that have firewires jacks, memory card readers, USB 2.0 ports ect. and had IGP graphic card built in. (I almost planned to trade my new Acer for HP cuz of built in IGP graphic card w/ it's own 128mb.)
If you are a gamer, get one with graphic card that have it's own memory like IGP graphic card built in laptop with it's own 128mb or 256mb. ATI Radeon X1300 or X1600 would do good with game but cannot promise cuz of game's graphic varies differently affecting performance of laptop. Dell XPS 17inch WXGA wide screen are pretty good perfomer. Try Alienware laptop too LOL.
Most laptops uses shared video like mine. Some allow you to adjust shared video memory but takes away system memory. Only solution is to add more memory to justify it. I've played Myst's URU, Myst: End of Age (they're graphically intensive game) and my laptop did okay on it. I change video memory setting to 128mb maximum thus reducing System memory to 384mb. If I had added 1GB SODIMM card, Game would have ran smoothly and effortlessly.
Also be sure it's plugged to power outlet to keep processor running at maximum speed while playing graphic intensive games. If you run it on battery. At first it'll run good on game but once battery dropped to 1/2, processor suddenly cut it's speed to 1/2 causing games run slow or choppy and hard drive will thrash to either catch up game graphic or save game if you stop the game. My laptop does it.
Laptops varies differently. So you will have to make your decision which would be good for your lifestyle. If you are a simple user who check Email. Go website shopping, use MS Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Get cheaper one. If you are power user just like Tim Allen's Arrg Arrg, get the one with it's own graphic memory like IGP and XWGA Widescreen and 1 or 2GB memory and even have TV card built in.. I do not want to favor Intel or AMD processors. Both are pretty much the same.
Be sure it's compatible or works with Windows Vista. Currently, New laptops already have Windows Vista installed.
There are some odd something laptops brands that are not sold in store or some shopping website. Like Motherboard manufacturer sells Laptop under it's own name. ASUS, Giga-Byte, Abit, MSI or some motherboard names DO sell nice laptops. So check it out too.
Thanks
Catty