I've purchased and set up a variety of 15.4" widescreen laptops in the last 2 months. I believe that there are some bargains to be had and for what it's worth, here are my views.
At our primary school, the deputy head is an intensive user who has been provided with a Lenovo 200N. This has a robust build, coated screen and is a good workhorse - the 802.11g is also rock-solid and is used extensively. The disk has recently suffered from a couple of system file corruptions following (during ?) synchronisation of offline files. This caused it to go into occasional reboot loops which I've managed to fix temporarily with an earth-shattering utility but I believe that a re-installation of factory set-up will soon be required.
Note to self .... disable offline synchronisation for this user.
The HP model 6720s (Part No: RK154AVX3) running an AMD dual-core Turion with 2Gb is also good value as this pre-loads XP Pro during setup but comes with a full set of Vista Business disks for those who may want to ....... It does not have a toughened/coated TFT screen. I've set up lots of HP 6715b laptops previously and reliability is very good. Expect to pay around £328 + VAT.
Although I've traditionally steered clear of Toshibas due to their overheating histories, my most recent experiences have been more favourable. The Satellite Pro A300-1DZ (Part No: PSAG1E-00F004EN) has a 1.86GHz Core2Duo Intel with 1Gb and a coated screen. This one preloads Vista Business but provides the XP Pro DVD if you want to load this instead either initially or later. If you choose not to load Vista during initial config, you can only get the Vista disks by paying for them ! Currently available at around £309 + VAT and £12 for an extra 1Gb of RAM (which I put into this one).
Of course, they all come with a 60-day trial of MS Office 2007 preloaded which you can get rid of during initial config.
Hope this helps.
