Flood, recommend me a new laptop

Lenovo ThinkPads are your best option if you can afford them. You probably don't need (I said "need", not "want") a W-series, so check out the T-series. I've owned a few HP machines, and we mainly use HP at work, but I've been outright floored by the build quality of the Lenovos. My friends tend to bring me their machines for repairs (not my job, I'm an engineer, I just know how to fix them) so I've had the "pleasure" of working on all the major brands, dealing with their tech "support", and ordering parts. Hands down, Lenovo's hardware is the most solidly engineered I've seen, easiest to work on, and their tech support is actually [i]helpful[/i]. For example, the motherboard in my T61p died about a week out of my 3-year accidental damage warranty (common problem with the Nvidia Quadro graphics they put in them in 2007). I called up Lenovo to see how much it would cost to fix it, and they did it for free. Trying to get something fixed by HP, even under warranty, has always been difficult. It's better than Dell, but it's still always been more of a hassle to get an HP repaired than a Lenovo. That said, if you're doing the repairs yourself, either is fine. Now, I like both HP and Lenovo. My work (engineering and production facility) uses HP laptops and workstations almost exclusively. However, if I had a choice, I would choose Lenovo over HP. A good rule of thumb is to always buy from the "business" line of a particular brand. So, from HP that'd be the ProBook or EliteBook. From Lenovo, you'll want a ThinkPad (really anything from their Think series). The business lines tend to be more stable with better hardware and drivers. Businesses that order hundreds or thousands of machines for their employees like to have all the same parts with a lower failure rate. Home users don't usually know or care about such things.