In searching this thread I don't think anyone has mentioned MESH.
I had a 17" P4 MESH laptop, my first couple of years with it were very good although battery life was crap (I bought it second hand when it was about a year old) and it wouldn't last anymore than 10minutes and it ran really hot, however it did just keep running for ages and never seemed to go wrong.
Until in the third year, stuff started to fall apart, one of the two 512MB RAM chips broke so the computer wouldn't boot with it in and then once this happend:
No idea...
And then later it started to randomly not boot, this become more and more a common occorance until had to try to boot it 3-4 times every time I wanted it on. Until eventual it wouldn't boot at all (managed to boot with a Norton file saving disc thing) so I took to a techy friend and he told me that either the motherboard or processor had gone.
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Now I have a pretty damn good Dell XPS M1530 (IMO) see spec at the side. And have had it about a month and have no problems with it at all (supriseingly, since it had Vista..). Boots real quick, finger print scanner is pretty cool too (and it works well). Runs Crysis on medium well (seems to be a bench mark atm). All that for £700, it's lifespan remains to be seen, but I'm very pleased with it atm.