Well, I'm absolutely happy with my desktop, and honestly not traveling much, but I do have many customers, that I have to go to and need a portable computer to do work/research, and ocasionally play a movie or dump photos from camera, originally been thinking of a decent Win 7 tablet, but that idea quickly dissipated. Really, right now it's almost cry for help, friday I forked out $60 short of a grand for a Toshiba Protege R835-50X, with i#, which was slower than snail, and did not feel like a thousand dollar laptop, was light as heck with excelent battery life, but not as cool as $1000 in a pocket, next day I returned and shook extra $600 for a Sony VAIO VPCSC1AFM/S, which was like a swiss knife of a laptop, everything you could think of included, but didn't work, due to dead mobo, or so Sony folks said. So good news, I got my cash back, bad, completely disappointed with Big BB stores, and still on a page one on a laptop hunt...
thank you for an insider look at "A's" customer service, big thing...

Check out the Asus Eee pcs great battery life and they will do what you need while letting you keep the majority of your cash in your pocket. I know a girl that just replaced her 4 year old Eee laptop and swears by them. Her daily uses were note taking/school work at the university, movies, music, internet and video/picture editing. http://usa.asus.com/Eee/

They aren't a desktop replacement but they will do what you need and should survive a few years, plus you can take the extra 500-600 bucks and invest it in your desktop.

I have had my Gateway N79 for over a year now and have no issues, other than the fact that it's a powerhouse laptop which means I get 2 hours on a charge. But a 17 inch screen, i7, 8 gigs of memory and discrete graphics can do that to a battery. The only other thing I can squawk about is the crappy wifi antenna, but then again there is no such thing as a laptop with a good antenna.

Sidenote, don't bother trying to play a game on any powerhouse laptop without being plugged in to wall power. My BF2 record uptime was 15 minutes, Crysis was 5 minutes.

I have to agree to the above..
It does not sound like you need a laptop of that level..
you need a basic notebook...
For me the Eee thing is just to small to not hit
backspace 12,000 times a day....aaaaaaaah no.
BUT..for $4-500 you could get a great basic
and have enough left that you could grab a gpu upgrade...
with coin left over for a BullDozer.
I have to admit though, I'm not a laptop guy..
but today they are like a cell phone...gotta have it to compete.c.

Netbook idea crossed my mind few times, I actually got one few weeks ago and set it up for my friend's kid, long story, but those things are pretty good, chrsplmr yeah, you are right, I don't need high end system, but we all have that little "why the hell not?" bone, why otherwise we would wind up in this forum at the first place? I'm thinking of sticking that ASUS GTX580 Matrix to my system, and discarding GTS 450, but had no experience with running two graphics cards from different models/manufacturers, and CANT WAIT FOR BULLDOZER! Jaytheredneck1 well, I'm not a mobile gamer, but it does make a performance statement. By the way, I had issues with my build crashing on me too (reading your signature) for some weird reason those G.Skill sticks work better undervolted, I dropped mine from 1.5 Factory to 1.425 and so far so good and at one point I saw that Raja was running his chip and NB pretty cold too, 1.32 V on CPU power hits that sweet spot. give this a shot, and maybe step back on memory timings a notch.

Back with my dumb**** if I'm returning to lightweight systems, looks like I have a choice of 4, 1 ASUS EEEPC 1018P Looks interesting, 2 ACER (yes, I know stay away) A500 and drop linux as second boot image on it, 3 ACER (again) W500 again with linux on it, this time non ARM, or crigslist a used netbook and be happy with what it is, I'm open to suggestions.

Well I'm going to say...there is only one choice..hahahaha...Asus, Asus, Asus.
If you have the extra coin...yes,indeed...why not.

Im not suggesting a vendor or sale or anything..this is just to say..you have options brother..

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/search.asp?page=5&keywords=asus notebook&sort=Price&dir=desc

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&Description=asus+notebook&bop=A...

As to the ram..
Everything I have read..going even back to the CrossHair IV.. was...
Black 1333 cas7 ...
(the tech guys might KNOW more about this..this is just what I read)
..the laptop thing..well.. who wouldn't want that power, portable...GENE..
I just dont see it...I keep thinking...the size of the gpu's and coolers we need...
if this keeps up...the Crosshair X Gene will be the size of todays cpu's..
just peel and stick it to your temple.......good luck..

hahahhaa.... I just saw (in my cartoon thinking mind) Junkie's X mod...yikes!!! hahaa
I volunteer my head J....c u then.
(not to dis MM or the other Super Modders......ever.)c.

Side Note: The good news is..I have heard that you can't go there if you lived in
Arizona.......I turned on the air in my car there once..and I am not
sure if it was laughing at me or just crying hysterically...
Different 'hot' than Florida..there...'its the humidity'...they say..
It's hotter than flames and your breathing water...what a treat.
Ariz..its hotter than flames..you cant taste your tongue and it hurts to blink..hahaha..sorry..Pa. Mountains...yummmmmmmm.

Arizona SUCKS, I woke up today just to find out, that my AC already blasting away, and will probably stop counteracting heat at around 11, and not until 8-9PM, that's how morning looks like, wish I could move to San Diego, car AC, well, if you sit for 5 minutes without moving, like in a bank ATM line, then you'd get hot air out of it. Asus is an excellent option, and I would be stupid to say it's not here, and most likely I will end up getting one of those, but at the same time, it does make you feel better knowing what's competition up to.

My experience with a gen 1 netbook has been mostly positive. The graphics performance is fairly underwhelming but I've found that a few of my steam games run decently. If I was getting a new one I would go with something like ION with a GPU assist and minimum 768 vertical lines. I think that would fill the gap for me. You just can't beat the compact size and weight for day tripping. I used to have a heavy full sized laptop and I found myself leaving it behind due to the weight. If you were a business traveler who spends multiple days at a time in hotels then I would say go for a desktop replacement for a home away from home experience. If you just need something to kill a few minutes of time and you'll be gaming on your desktop in the evenings I'd go with a netbook or sub notebook.