Lenovo ThinkPad Z60t 2511 (Pentium M 760 2 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB HDD)

Pros: Powerful, full featured, thin and light

Cons: Wish it can go lighter

Summary: As a traveling consultant, I need a light weight notebook to make travel easier. But I also need the laptop to run monster server applications like Oracle, DB2 and Websphere. This is the best I can get. And yes there are lighter ones that goes to 2.7lb, but can accomadate only 1GB memory and no optical drive. This one has 2GB max and a DVD burner. Plus this one has SATA HD which is really important for speed up applications, especially video capturing. I owned Dell Latitude 610, 600, Inspiron 1300, thinkpad A ... Thinkpad is by far my preference. It is more expensive than Dell, but definitely better designed. My company laptop Dell 600 and now 610 consistantly burn my left hand because some genius designers at Dell put the hard drive right under your left palm. And the 610 weighs tons! This new thinkpad squeezes all the features (even a wide screen and card reader) in a small package and its battery life is outstanding. Now the flexible ultra bay adapter ($48) enable me to add a Linux and a Solaries operating system on seperate drive and boot whatever I want depending on my client. For Dell 610 you have to buy the drive from them (which means rediculous price). They don't sell you the caddy although you can buy the caddy from the black market. Enven with a Dell cady you have to screw and unscrew the drive everytime you change it.

Oh, the keyboard lighting which illuminate the keyboard on the airplane when it is dark comes in really handy in long haul flight.