Here are my choices for best laptops for small business work. I consider that a great laptop for small business work gives you portablity (these are not desktop replacement machines), power to run Vista, battery life, connectivity, DVD watching (for those hours on the plane).
Specifically, I recommend:
- Dual Core CPUs only, 1.66Ghz-1.83Ghz is plenty sufficient (no need to pay extra for 2+ Ghz)
- 1 Gig or Ram required
- 80 Gigs of HDD required
- DVD drive built-in required
- 3.5 hours battery life or more required
- 14" widescreen or smaller
- 6 pounds or less, with 4 pounds being the top of the line in this category
Recommended Vista Laptop (powerful + graphics capability to use Vista's fancy new 3D UI).
HP Pavillion dv2000t, $1000 or less for a good configuration.
What's good about it: Good for Vista in the 128MB GeForce Go 7200 configuration, Intel Duo Core (best price/performance is probably the 1.73Ghz T2250 option), Widescreen display, 12-cell battery gives more than 5 hours battery life (the 6 cell is a disappointing 2.5 hours or less), wi-fi & bluetooth, quiet, quality built, modern design, built-in webcam, 3xUSB, 1xFirewire, just under 6 pounds.
Dell Latitude D620, $1500 for a good configuration.
What's good about it: Good for Vista, Intel Core Duo processor, WideScreen display available in 1440x900 resolution, two battery option for extra long battery life, NVidia Quatro graphics performance, wi-fi, bluetooth and cellular broadband ($200 option for Verizon or Cingular), about 6 pounds.
Dell XPS M1210, $1800 for a good configuration
What is good about it: Great for Vista, powerful but light and small, 5 pounds with the large capacity battery (4 hours), 12.1" widescreen display, Intel Core Duo processor, NVidia GeForce graphics performance, wi-fi, bluetooth and cellular broadband ($200 option for Verizon), built-in web camera.
Sony Vaio SZ160 (or SZ120 with 128MB video memory only), $1600 for a good configuration
What is good about it: Thin, small with 13.3" widescreen display, light at 4 pounds. Good for Vista with an NVidia dedicated graphic card with 256MB of memory, which can be switched off (at boot only) for lower power Intel graphics when battery life is more important than 3D graphics. Sony claims up to 7 hours of batter life possible (w/larger battery?). Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Firewire. Maybe a tough one to find in store.
If you don't require Vista's fancy 3D UI...
Toshiba Satellite U205, less than $1200.
What's good about it: Great for light mobility, 4.1 pounds, 12.1 widescreen display (1280x800), Wi-Fi, Dual Core, DVD Supermulti drive (DVD+/-R/RW/CD-RW), 3 USB & 1 Firewire ports, built-in media card reader, over 4 hours battery life.
Dell Inspiron 1405, $1000 or less for a good configuration
What is good about it: cheap for what you get! 14" widescreen at 1440x900, dual core, 8x DVD burner, 5.5 pounds, Firewire and 4 USB ports, small and light but not so thin, 3+ hours battery.
Apple MacBook, white, $1250 for a good configuration
What is good about it: it is a Mac, a beautiful one, it is pretty powerful, can run Windows natively (Bootcamp) or as a virtual app (Parallels) as well as Apple's iLife suite. Comes only in 13" widescreen. This is my current laptop by the way... :-)