I've finally bought a new laptop, yay! It's a HP Pavilion dv5-1007, which is a slightly older model, but I got the display model for $700 less than full price, which is nothing to be ashamed of :-) The specs are:
CPU: Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz
Graphics: 512MB GeForce 9600M
Memory: 4GB
HDD: 320GB
It's certainly a damn sight faster than my old laptop!
One thing which perplexes me, however, is how all the OEMs pre-install 32-bit Vista - even on computers with 4GB of RAM. In fact, HP included in my box a little booklet, written in about 50 different languages, explaining how when you look at the "physical memory" in Windows, it'll say closer to 3GB even though you've got 4GB and how you can go into the BIOS and look at the real value.
I mean, sure Microsoft charge more for the 64-bit version of Vista (at least, they used to. I'm not sure they still do...) but wouldn't it be more expensive for HP to hire a writer to write, translators to translate and printers to print that booklet than to just pre-install 64-bit Vista?
Anyway, given that the first thing I do with a new computer is wipe the OS and install from scratch, it doesn't really affect me. I just think it's a little strange.
Merry Xmas!