Hello,
I'm getting quite exasperated at my laptop, and I've decided to get a new one. I think I'll go for a DELL Latitude E6520 since I travel with my laptop practically every day and weight is an issue, but myDELL Latitude E6520 " is too much of a sacrifice in screen size for weight reduction/battery life.
I only just started looking but I'm really not sure where to start. I'm not a gamer, I don't watch movies on my laptop, but I use some fairly cpu-intensive software on a daily basis -- stuff like ArcInfo, AutoCAD, Autodesk 3D Studio Max, Adobe CS applications, etc. Of those, the first one is probably the most relevant, since my ArcMap crashes a lot or locks my laptop up for hours when I'm doing particularly large spatial analyses. Basically a laptop designed for hard work.
The best sellers on amazon look interesting enough (e.g. http://www.laptopbatterymag.com/dell-alienware-m11x.htm ) -- 400 quid for 6gb RAM and what look like decent processors, although a review mentioned that the video card is rubbish. I don't mind spending a bit more than 400 but there comes a point where I'd rather not throw more money at incremental upgrades.