[Arledrian]

TL,

if you can get over any Ebay hang-ups you may have, I seriously suggest you take a look there. I know, I know - many people know people who in turn have heard of people getting ripped off/conned, but the fact of the matter is, it's my first choice for anything to do with electronics, and with good reason.

You can save hundreds on a brand-new notebook if you buy from there, and you'll see the attraction yourself when you're browsing the site and suddenly there's that laptop with awesome specifications that you never thought you could afford. Ebay is very safe so long as you buy from an online store or very reputable seller.

I just wanted to point this out as I get so frustrated with people paying too much through regular stores [img]smile.gif[/img]

As for your questions:

1) I've stuck with HP as my choice of laptop for five years now (two machines, both bought on Ebay). I've never had even the slightest problem. What I notice is that these notebooks seem to be far more substantial than most others - ie. they make great desktop replacements. HP doesn't skimp on things like hard drives or memory, as I find Dell guilty of - plus they all include an internal floppy drive. As for technical support - I have phoned and emailed often enough with pretty random questions, and HP have always been responsive and helpful. I can't really fault them in any way, to be perfectly honest. Fujitsu I can't say too much about I'm afraid [img]smile.gif[/img]

2) A 128mb video card is just about the best you're going to get in a notebook, regardless of brand. It's certainly more than enough to play any video game out there. The 256mb cards are generally only found in desktop computers. So just to confirm, I personally think the ATI Mobility you saw is absolutely fine. It's been out a while, but I wouldn't call it outdated by any means.

3) I don't know too much about these chips, to be honest. Just that on-chip memory is, of course, always better than shared. I'm pretty sure that, for example, a 32mb dedicated video card will outperform a 64mb shared one. So in that case, I think some of the (unshared) NVIDIA chips you've seen are probably the way to go, but the ATI mentioned above is also fine. Either way, you don't need to worry about these cards not being able to run certain games, the only question is really how well they'll run the games.

4) I personally love the new Sony Vaio's. Very expensive, but they have the features and specifications to warrant the price tags, and as I mentioned before, if you take a look on Ebay, you might be pleasantly surprised. The new Acer Travelmate notebook/tablet PC hybrids are also awesome, as are the Toshibas and the new IBM Thinkpads. Without going off on too many separate tangents here, I don't think you can really go too wrong with anything these days. Just shop around for good prices and read as many (online) reviews as you can.

Good luck, hope my rantings have helped somewhat - I get the feeling they have, but probably only with any insomnia you may have been suffering from [img]smile.gif[/img]