which laptop is the best?

I was asked by a neighbor today about "the best" laptop available, well, I know you know, that's a tricky question: here goes my answer (transcript almost literally from the email)

there is not a single laptop that can be qualified as the best of the best, usually what people focuses on while shopping for a laptop is a good performance/price ratio, (the best bang for your buck, if you know what I mean) there is one manufacturer which builds laptops for gaming people, and as games are usually a processor/memory eaters, you do need a great laptop to be able to run any game in a decent manner, so, even as being not a gamer, you may find some benefits from getting one from alienware, at www.alienware.com, personally, I just go for the best one I can afford at lenovo.com, which usually fits the bill, there is also a laptop for the field, if you travel a lot and have a need for a tough one, toshiba thoughbooks are for that.

you see? there is a million laptops for every need and user, what I recommend is to have it customized online at the buyer's site, like at dell.com, another seller, which some people disqualify as a good vendor but I heard some good stories too, well, being a laptop technician , I saw all of them fail and crash, so no laptop even the best in the world will ever replace a good backup policy and a disaster recovery plan, check the freebie at www.crashplan.com, where they provide offline and online backup for free and paid, depending on the kind of service and how you want your data to be secured. but don't forget, once online, forever online, no matter if they say it's encrypted, it is still there. so you may wanna do like I do, just have a offline backup policy , I backup right to my server, and I keep my stuff at a different physical place just for safety.

personally , I have an old and still reliable thinkpad T60 which I bought used and I upgraded to the maximum RAM possible (2Gb) and a 30Gb SSD hard drive which provides the muscle for speed and another 120Gb hard drive in the CD bay for storage. this one fits all my needs and I have it with windows XP service pack 3, which I got off eBay for near 40 dollars, any laptop today will come with a flavor of Windows 7, wich off the shelf is already asking you for a lot of memory, so I try to avoid going that route yet. I do have windows 7 in my desktop computer, but not in any of my laptops. I also have a mac desktop and a mac laptop, and a couple of HP laptops and a Gateway, but like I said, I it's a personal preference. being a geek I do have to have multiple computers :)

anyway, feel free to ask me any questions about the subject, I love IT consulting. oh, and my next laptop will be a lenovo w700, which runs (refurbished) close to 1200 dollars at eBay. but I will consider other options when decided.

best regards.