Are Dells the only choice right now?

[riddlermarc]

I'm looking at spending £500-600 on a lappy, heavy reading on this forum suggests it has to be a Dell (1500, 1525, 1700) etc.. does nothing else touch these at the moment?

I'm assuming C2D is the way to go, which galls me as I've always been an AMD man but bang per buck it's C2D?

I don't know what other manufacturers/suppliers are good right now, the last time I bought a system was from Mesh (I can mention them but not link?)

Realistically then should I go Dell?

 

[riddlermarc]

Why do you think Dell are good? If I had the money I'd get a Rock or Sagem laptop.

Sorry, that's not qhat I meant - read pretty much any post in this forum that asks for a recommendation and chances are you'll get the reply "buy a Dell (Vostro/Inspiron etc)" and I haven't seen any other recommendations.. that's why it seems Dells are the way to go, judging on the posts here.

I'm not looking at playing any heavy games, maybe a little light, old gaming but I'm not at all into FPS and recent games etc. I need 2Gb ram and a fast processor as it's going to be used for a lot of Visual Studio 2005 work and that loves a beefier system. I'm thinking a 2GHz C2D, 2Gb ram, 120Gb+ hdd and preferably non-integrated graphics but that's fine if that is what I have to have. Actually, it sounds like fish99's new purchase would be ideal

Can I ask if the Turions out now for laptops are actually any good? I know when AMD started producing chips for laptops they were hot and power hungry :/