need laptop

[catastrophy]

I need to get a laptop (I've gone far too long without a dedicated pc...).
If you have advice or recommendations on brand/model, let's hear 'em.

My Specs:
Must run Windows 7 (No Vista!)
Have internal optical drive (I can live with out)
Portable (I favor battery life and lightweight over display)
Decent battery life (3 cell with low energy use, or maybe 6 cell)
Price under $500 pretty please?

EDIT
Current front runner: $500 Toshiba Satellite T115D (AMD Athlon™ Neo X2 Dual-Core, Windows 7, 2GB memory, 320GB hard drive)

Any opinions on the HP Mini or Dell Mini 10 / Inspirion 11z?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

$479: TOSHIBA Satellite L505D-LS5010 NoteBook AMD Athlon II M300(2.0GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory DDR2 800 250GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Radeon 4100 - Retail

Honestly, I would guess the price of older Core2Duos will go down in price, as Intel has released the Nehelem cores back in January. I suspect liquidation would start this summer, but that's just my guess.

I have a HP Pavilion dv2000, and it's great, except for the fact that HP skimped on design of the GMU heatsink. This means the temperature spikes to 85 Celcius when I play games. Kinda crappy, actually. Other than that, I'm seeing laptop prices dip as vendors prepare for new ones. I would suggest you wait till the summer/fall to purchase a decent Core2, but as I peruse Newegg, I see decent laptops for under $500. Also, don't bother with SSDs yet, they're still the size of flash memory sticks, and the benefit isn't justified unless you're a news reporter who needs that little shaving of weight and battery life in trade for a drive that's 1/40th the size of conventional laptop HDs.

My two cents, anyway. /v/gmas.