Come the first of the year I am going to purchase a new Windows Based PC. It has to have a decent video card, and will be used as a desktop replacement machine thus I will be looking at a 17 inch monitor. I will be using it with a secondary monitor as well. I have had good luck the last couple of years with HP machines and will likely look at what they have available.
Due to some of the video intensive processes the machine will be running, the option of just using my MacBook Pro is really not an option. It would be pretty awesome to have the EVDO card built in, and I am pretty partial to Sprint at this point in that department. I have not shopped around in a while and wonder if any of you have recently picked up a nice laptop and would like to share what you purchased.
My latest PC laptop is the IBM ThinkPad X61 TabletPC. I travel a lot and the size plus power of the unit was important. I don’t think it matches what you wrote (at least on screen size) but I think it can come integrated with broadband-wireless. I find using the Tablet functions with One Note and MindManager to be ideal for business situations where you want to take digital notes but typing while in a meeting is not appropriate. Good luck. – Steve
Don’t get rid of the MacBook Pro. Just get a copy of Leopard and install BootCamp on it. You can run Windows natively on your MacBook, and it’s a damn good computer too. PC World claims it’s the best Windows laptop out there.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135062-page,1/article.html