looking for a good laptop solution

my planned budget is about 2000 bucks, with which i want a good pc laptop (no macbook you fags) and external firewire soundcard.. core2duo 2ghz, 2gig RAM, 200gig hdd at least. a good screen, 17" ? portability isnt a huge factor. i'm considering a sony vaio AR51J, and a mackie onyx satellite. my current setup is 2 tannoy 8d's and a mackie 1402vlz. i'll probably sell the mixer. i need a good mic preamp and at least one line in. opinions plz

dell man... the Inspiron 1720 is their latest 17" model which can be customized to your specs. Look out for some nice online coupons here also be sure to at least get a 2 year warranty with complete care... my laptops motherboard fried after 2 years and they ended up sending me a new system replacement with upgraded hardware for free because of the warranty :) Just be sure to look out for those coupons... I found a 35% off coupon when I got mine and ended up getting my $1800 laptop for $1200 after taxes and shipping... gotta love it!

you should probably go dell, If you don't need a 17 inch screen i just got a dell inspiron 1520 with 2.2GHZ core duo windows xp 2 gigs of ram and an 250 GB hard drive for $1099 plus tax that would leave you $8-900 for an external hard drive and a firewire audio interface.

Do you need it to be portable at all? I'm just wondering because the price premium you pay to get a laptop is pretty hefty, you could build a quad-core intel box with 4+gb RAM and over a terabyte of hd space, complete with dual monitors and a kickin' audio interface for less money than just an ordinary Dell Laptop. You'd have enough left over to get a EEE or something tiny to do on the couch and in bed web surfing and stuff that people typically use the portability of laptops for, just something to consider anyway.

If not, consider that a 17" laptop is cumbersome just to have sitting on your lap, you might want a 15" and then buy a large monitor for your workspace to hook it up to instead.

How portable do you need your audio interface to be? The Phonix Helixboard Firewire mixers sound great, and stream all channels individually at 24/96. It really feels nice after having everything coming in over 1 stereo pair to have the freedom to route/apply fx separately to each of my synths.

thanks for excellent replies. i'm pretty sure internet discounts don't apply in sweden.

tentoes, i want it to be good for movie watching etc. i'm a big guy, don't think 17" will be cumbersome. i want to be able to take it around easily, to friends, to town, make music and wifi everywhere. it fits my flamboyant lifestyle enough to sacrifice specs. audiowise i'm thinking headphones away, audiocard at home.. maybe m-audiophile 2496, dirt cheap.

Ok well, I own a 12" mini, a 15.4", and a 17" laptop, the 17" was given to us by my wife's job and it's entirely useless for portable computing, with two people sitting face to face at a cafe-sized table, the other cannot use the table for a plate or their own laptop with it on there because it is so large. Sitting on a couch with it on your lap, you cannot see the edges of the screen clearly because you are too close to such a large screen for the viewing angle to be correct. It is incredibly heavy, it will last for perhaps 45 minutes on battery power, it's very very noisy, and the power adapter you have to lug around means youll have to carry it in an even more cumbersome laptop bag, etc. etc. The only thing is *is* good for is running Maya/3ds Max on the go because it has an incredible Geforce Quadro FX 2500M.

I mean do whatever you want I just have known lots of people who really think they want a 17" laptop because of the screen size and then go "oh shit" when they get one because it basically sucks. It's too big to be really portable, and too expensive/not fast enough to be worth it as a desktop.

hmm.. very good points man. after all my mates 13" macbook looks fine, 15" will prolly be a ok. my original idea was to get a separate monitor for xboxing aswell, i might aswell go with that, would be stupid not to with the prices nowadays.