Another laptop advice question

[rstark]

I'm in the market for a new laptop. Had bad experiences with consumer level HP and Compaq laptops (haven't tried their business line). I've had good luck with my Toshiba S5105. I'm currently looking at the Toshiba A70-S256 (P4, 3.06GHz) but don't really like the 15.4" wide screen. I'd much rather have a 15" normal screen that can go up to at least 1400x1050. Things that I must have:

Non-wide type of display, rather have taller vertical for editing pictures
Upgradeable to 1GB Ram
P4 2.8 + (don't care about Pentium M, don't need battery life)
Decent video card for editing photos/videos
IEEE 1394 and USB 2.0
Budget: around $1600
Need a 2 - 3 year extended warranty (I like Toshiba's extended warranty covering accidental breakage) for an additional $2-300 range.

I really like the Toshiba mentioned above, just wish it had a 15" screen.

Any advice is appreciated.

-Rick

 

[dumdum8684]

IBM is excellent on the laptops that they build. Check out the site and find one that fits you. I've always had a good experience with IBMs

 

[Ankush09]

I think your nudget is a bit tight for what u want. 1 gig ram, p4 2.8, and a good video card...I dont think your gona get a laptop you want with that much money.

 

[Ankush09]

Budget*

 

[rstark]

You think my budget is too low? Costco has the following:

Toshiba P25-S5263
Intel® Pentium® 4 3.0GHz processor with Hyper-Threading technology
800MHz processor system bus speed
512MB DDR SDRAM memory
80GB 4200RPM EIDE hard drive
DVD-SuperMulti Drive
17.0" WXGA TFT LCD display
NVIDIA® GeForce™ FX Go5200 graphics controller
i.Link® port (IEEE 1394)
Integrated Wireless LAN (Atheros 802.11b/g)

all for $1699. With their coupon for $200 off next month, that puts the price more into my range and I can still buy the extended warranty from Toshiba in the $200-300 range.

IBM doesn't make a laptop with a P4 and firewire. Sony's Brite screen is really nice, but I don't know about their reliability - anyone care to comment?

 

[rstark]

Sorry, I meant to add that I can add RAM for ~$220 to bring it up to 1GB (Crucial 2x512MB). So I'm really looking for the laptop in the $1600 range excluding adding memory and extended warranty.