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psonice, gotta disagree there... I used to think the same, until I got my last laptop last year. Its a sony vaio a197, the x-black widescreen is incredible. 1920 * 1200 res. Go down your local shop and get a demo of it or something, you'll be surprised.

I work in an IT department, and see a LOT of laptops. Which is why I know I don't like those really-high-res screens :)

I am also very satisfied with my Asus M6N as a demo machine. Good screen, good keyboard, good and sturdy hardware. It comes in widescreen or non-widescreen, whatever your taste is (I specifically went for a non-widescreen one). It runs most of todays demos, though sometimes a bit slowly if the demo wants more than 64MB gfxram (but very few do). I don't know if there is a 128MB version now.

I just bought a Libretto U100 - TINY little machine, runs all demos before 2003, and those later just slowly. Reason why I recommend it? People come up to you and ask you about it, then you shovel demos down their throat ;)

Buying extra warranty is not always necessary. IANAL, but overhere in the Netherlands for example the law says that you can expect expensive stuff like a laptop to last for several years, so even if you have only 1 year of warranty companies still have to fix it if it breaks within 3 years (and probably even after that).

It might be some hassle to get them to cooperate though, and they might also ask you to pay some part of the costs (depending on how soon it broke) because the repair will increase the lifespan of the laptop again.

sparcus, they did a study in the uk a year or 2 ago on warranties... official recommendation was that it's not worth buying an extended warranty for any electronic items... extended warranties usually give you 2 to 3 years for 10% to 40% (yeah, 40%) of the cost of the original item but most stuff is reliable enough that it won't break...

there was a huge legal thing about this a while back. uk electrical retailers make most of their profit on warranties.. government watchdog were investigating it... check this example, first thing i found: http://www.comet.co.uk/comet/html/cache/572_289310.html

£499 for laptop, £179.99 for 3 year warranty.. stupid prices.

From my experience, Acer is a pretty bad laptop manufacturer.
Great specs for nice price, but not reliable : mine has made two RMA this year! Now warranty's over, i pray !

If i had to choose again, i would go for Asus (or HP or Dell).

I use a Toshiba P25-S670 Laptop for demoshows. This is a nice laptop for doing demoshows, but I don't know that I'd recommend it for lots of traveling or battery usage. Its a power pig and a little heavy for such uses. They outfit the current model with the beefiest graphics they can get, so although mine has NV Go5700 graphics which was nice for the time I bought it, its a little behind the latest offerings. Still, I'm happy with this laptop because what I really wanted was portable desktop type power in a laptop form factor. It is definately more convenient than lugging a desktop, monitor and keyboard around to do demoshows.