Hi bluejuice, maybe I can shed some light.
Firstly, before you begin considering notebooks, you should first
decide what you want your notebook to do.
If its going to be for day to day office applications, surfing the
web, and misc. non-intensive programs, then note that any core duo
processor will be just fine for your needs. People tend to
overestimate and give too much credit to processor speeds. Even if
you're going to be gaming, processor impact between those few
hundred mhz wouldn't be massive.
If you're going to be gaming, then you should be looking more
towards what graphics solution the laptop comes with - the Dell
6400 that you're looking at for example can be configured for
either an onboard Intel graphics accelerator, or a dedicated
graphics solution such as the X1300, or X1400.
There are heaps of considerations that you're gonna have to factor
in and account for. Instead of listing every one of them manually
(because I'm lazy; but feel free to PM me if you need specific
direction), why don't you tell us what you expect your laptop to
do.
Regarding the 6400, it's of excellent build quality for that price.
Dell makes great notebooks for the price bracket because there is
no middle man. Infact, its the only notebook company I know of who
has a rather translucent operations process. Dell customer service
is pretty incompetent, but always polite and great to deal with.
Besides, within the first year of use, any manufacturing defects
will come to light, and will/can be dealt with using the standard
one year warranty. Anything beyond that one year is anyone's guess.
Go with the Dell, and save yourself a couple of hundred quid~
