Laptops

Preamble

First of all, everyone buying a laptop needs to read this article on laptop branding.

Secondly, the "best" laptop is always completely subjective. You need to know what you want your laptop for. You will always pay top dollar for the latest and greatest spec, so downgrade your spec a little bit and you can save a large amount of money. You need to balance that with future proofing your purchase however, as laptops are notoriously difficult and expensive to upgrade.

You could do worse than scour the notebook review forums (especially the "What Laptop Should I Buy?")

Build Quality

One of the intangible attributes of a laptop is it's build quality. Products like LG, Asus, Sager etc. have good reputations for the build quality of their laptops and are priced appropiately.

Purchasing abroad

A trip to the US is a great time to save a few euro purchasing a laptop. Bear in mind you will more than likely purchase a laptop with a US keyboard but it really does not take your brain long to reprogram! (I can quite comfortably switch between UK and US keyboards. Brains are great!). The second thing you need to be aware of is the US power supply, you will need to get a UK power supply for the laptop or a converter to carry around with you when you return.

Models

Clevo

Read the Clevo Guide on notebookreview.com
Two impressive Sager/Clevo Laptops: [1] Sager NP6630 - 15'4" [2] Sager NP9750 - 17"

Macbook / Macbook Pros

You're paying a premium as it's a Mac
Wait for OSX 10.5 to release before buying as upgrades not free (as of 21/Mar/2007). Check Wikipedia. Expected to be released shortly.
Stylish
Use Windows Vista / XP / Linux via Bootcamp

Acer Aspire line

Relatively low-cost.
Built like tanks, i.e. physically resiliant.
Poor battery life (1-3 hours depending on model/usage when new).
Fairly lightweight.