HP's gone downmarket in a big way, pushing lots of $700 notebooks into Costco, Target, Office Max, etc. They're the only laptops you see in Costco anymore, I s

HP's gone downmarket in a big way, pushing lots of $700 notebooks into Costco, Target, Office Max, etc. They're the only laptops you see in Costco anymore, I strenuously avoid them. I'll stick with thinkpads and Toshiba for XP/Ubuntu dual booters. i commented on teh Mark Evans blog that macbooks have one feature no other laptop under about $1700 has, the DVI out. That, Time Machine, textmate, iphoto, firewire, a listenable sound card, and a few other features are easily worth $750 canadian. I will say that i've had 4 mac laptops, 2 worked great (G4 powerbook and Macbook), 2 are problematic. Another powerbook had its logic board replaced 3 x (twice in last 5 months), and i've experienced spontaneous freezes on Leopard a few times when quitting Firefox or textmate. This i consider a serious issue.