so... laptop pricing advice?

I don't really care

my daughter thinks macs are cool, is getting heavy into photo/video stuff and will want one for college where she will likely go to either become a photo journalist or visual artist...or both

the people who work for me have been living in mac supported high school and college environments for the last several years and can't stand pc's 

I'm sensing the waving is building...it is subtle right now, probably not so different than being way offshore floating around in an inner tube when a tsunami passes below

my wife continues to have difficulties with stupid MS operating system 'pop up' prompts...especially those warning of all sorts of dire consequences 

The other night, she woke me up at 2am to ask wtf she should do about one!  I can't blame her for being so concerned and unsure: 

It said "You are about to close an inactive program that was active just moments ago, but through no fault of your own, became inactive at the EXACT instant you could least afford it, and if it closes, you will lose all of the work you've done on this computer in the last 2 years and 7 months.  Plus, by closing this window without first pressing the Yes, No or Cancel buttons below, you will cause the release of a plague of flesh eating locusts from the closet in your sleeping son's bedroom.  Are you sure you really want to close this window?"

I hear that stuff is worse than an order of magnitude on vista. 

MS is clearly in a cycle of creating horrible OS's on alternate roll outs.

my computers aren't going to survive until the post-vista roll out rolls out.  I was stupid and cheap and when I bought them and didn't buy enough gigaterapixelbytemyfetidjockrams at the time.  I would have, but none of that went on sale until PRECISELY 0.0176 ms after I clicked the 'Buy this item' button

*fudge* pc's