Wanted: New Laptop; Current Laptop & Wallet Both Broke

I've had my laptop since 2008. I purchased it in August then, it was a refurb I found on sale on Buy.com I think. At $500 it was pretty sweet - my wife just needed something for the road since she was going to be doing some travelling work. We of course needed to upgrade the memory, and before long Vista crashed so hard that nothing I did would work. It then ran XP for a long time until I personally ****ed that installation up hardcore. Now it runs Windows 7, which I'm very happy with actually.

Anyway, this has all been somewhat off-topic. I need a new laptop.

My dog chewed through the AC adapter cord on this one (learned how to solder wires back together then) and then, through abusive usage, the power board inside the case has been screwed up so that most of the time I can barely keep the connectors together during regular use. On top of that the battery is completely shot (currently at 5%, not charging -_-) and if it comes unplugged (which happens often) it shuts down within 1 minute.

*sigh*

I don't have any money right now, but I'm looking into the future. I've always tossed around the idea of getting a Mac, but I really don't think I can stoop that low. So, I cast my gaze back onto the Windows rigs on Newegg. One I'm particularly fond of is this beast:







A 17" 1920x1080 screen, 8GB with a 500GB HDD and an ATI Mobility 5870 - in the $1450 range. This thing is a beast that puts my desktop to shame. I was obsessed with this computer until I went over to Buy.com where they've got the next step up in the G-series. It looks the same but runs the next processor up (740Q instead of 720Q) has 1TB of storage space - currently at $1680.

Well, what do you guys think? Post some links to nice rigs if you've got 'em, I'll be browsing for quite some time with my current financial state. Opinions are very welcome in this realm, there's more than one viewpoint for any issue.

Thanks guys!

-- The only constant is change --