laptop recommendations please!!!

[alphatarget1]

I have a inspirion 2650 now. it's a stripped down POS that i'll sell to my cousin.

specs:
14.1" XGA TFT
24x CDrom
1x cardbus/PCMCIA (ONLY 1!!!)
1.6ghz P4 mobile processor (probably the best of this laptop)
320mb DDR sdram
2x USB 1.1 port (DOH)
geforce 2 go 8mb (....)
no firewire
no IR port
nice battery life however (lowest brightness will get me 3+ hours)

needless to say i'm sick of this POS. I'm looking into the dell inspirion 5100 now but here is basically what i want

dream laptop specs:
14.1" SXGA (this is a must, XGA sucks)
USB2.0 and Firewire (a must)
2x cardbus/PCMCIA
processor speed doesn't really matter but i really want a mobile p4
preferably a mobular bay and a DVD drive
ram is upgradable, but 512mb sounds good
decent graphics (ATI radeon 7500 16mb is good enough)
onboard wireless capability preferred

the only downsides on the inspirion is that if i want a SXGA screen i'll have to get a 15" (would prefer a 14.1") screen, only 1 cardbus slot, a fixed media bay and no IR. The desktop P4 doesn't really help but i can live with that. Dell doesn't offer such laptops with 2x PCMCIA slots anymore i don't think. any suggestions on what i should get?

 

[OldSpooky]

Try the IBM ThinkPad R40 series - I think those have FireWire.

Why do you want a P4-M? The Pentium-M runs much cooler and runs just about as fast.

 

[mocca]

I would recommand IBM R40 or T40. The R40 is cheaper than T40 and come with 15" XGA or SXGA+ LCD. The R40 is heavier than T40 though. Other than these two, Sony GRZ or GRS series are pretty good too but Sony technical support is not very good. BTW, T40 doesn't have firewire port though. I would go with P-M instead of P4m because it run much cooler and have longer battery life.

Mocca

 

[itsramesh]

i have had an inspiron 5100 for about 2 months now.

Iam really impressed by the specs which are latest in the mobile market:
Desktop P4 Chip
5400rpm HardDrive
Fast Cdwriter
USB 2.0 ports
IEEE1394 Firewire port

Its a bit heavy to carry around though ... 9 pounds with the adapter.
It is amazingly stable and is not "hot" either(as claimed by supporters of mobile processors). Battery life is good at 3 hours.
I have used it in high-performance applications like Divx, mpeg encoding and this is by far the fastest performance i have seen. I have an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ desktop too.