[Hoot Gibson]

My advice is not to get an expensive, high-quality laptop. Assuming that you might end up programming with languages that require Windows, I would steer clear of Apple (and I would love to have a MacBook). I would buy a good quality netbook like an ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005PE. Netbooks like this one are very light and have a very long battery life (advertised as 11 hours but you would probably get at least 7 or 8 hours under normal use). I would add a Gb of memory and an external DVD player/CD writer.

I would also get a good quality desktop PC with a large screen (I have a 24-inch wide-screen format monitor at home and use dual 22 inch monitors at work). I have an Asus desktop with 8 Gb of RAM and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit - but a Dell or any other top brand would do just as well. (I would stay far, far away from anything having a Gateway label on it.) I have used Dells exclusively at work (Optiplexes) for the past 10 years and they give a very reasonable bang for the buck.

Laptops are not as reliable as desktops and they are much less user-configurable. For my money, I would go with a cheap netbook and a good desktop and you will probably still be out less money than you would spend on a high end laptop. If most of your work will be done at home, buy a good quality computer chair and do your programming work on a desktop. You will not regret it.

The drawbacks to a netbook are obviously the small screen, a relatively slow processor, and a 2 Gb limit on RAM. To me, the low cost, long battery life, light weight, and built-in wireless-N are worth the trade-offs. I also like the fact that I can hook up the ASUS netbook to a 24 inch monitor and drive it at a high resolution (1900x1280, I believe).

If you are determined to go for a high-end laptop, then I would look at the Lenovo ThinkPad, a Toshiba Satellite, or a Dell, in that order. (Lenovo acquired the ThinkPad line from IBM, which has exited the laptop business.)