[sanddrag]

If it isn't a ridiculous amount more, go for the faster hard drive. I have a 10,000 rpm drive in my primary tower and I'd never build another for myself without one. The faster drive will definitely be a noticeable improvement. As for RAM, how much more does the manufacturer charge? You could get the baseline, then pick up some pretty cheap from MWave and install it yourself.

Personally, I'm a budget laptop owner. I have a $500 Acer laptop. It isn't really fast, but it does everything I need to well enough. I don't game (so I have no idea how well that works), but it plays music, handless Office documents, goes online, plays DVDs, runs SolidWorks just fine, which is all I need. And it has a keyboard I can type faster on than a desktop. I can get 2.5 hours out of the battery on medium performance settings, and over 3 hours if I crank the CPU and brightness all the way down. And if I drop it, I didn't just lose $1500. The only real limitation I've met with it so far is it's inability to decently run all the desktop composition effects in Vista (transparency and whatnot). But, I don't need all that eye candy anyhow.

Anyway, I understand your desire for a good fast laptop with enough specs to last you a while. Good luck in your search, let us know what you decide.