[djjef]

I have a few pointers:

a. Find the highest capacity Hard Drive you can find in one internally. Best Buy has a Toshiba with a 80 gb drive. I believe it is like around $1700.

b. 512 Meg of Ram is about average now

c. Pentium 4 chipset with Hyperthreading would prepare you for the future software a little more. Something like a 3 ghz or 2.8 ghz.

d. Firewire is good for expansion options.

Warranty, Warranty, Warranty.
If you buy from Best Buy then get the extended warranty. It can save you money in the long run. I have come out smelling like a rose twice with my wife's laptop being replaced with something like 4 times the system.

I also love my Dells. I actually have one system that still uses a Pentium 3 - 500 mhz Latitude that is absolutely flawless.

I suggest Dell but would still look at Best Buy as an option. The Dell would get you a replacement or repaired system next day where as the Best Buy route is taking me about 4 days now. 4 days may seem like an enternity if you totally depend on that Laptop for shows. I myself have 4 laptops and 3 rackmount systems so I always have backups.

Hope that helps.