Notebook recommendations and/or barebones kit experience?

[Martin Cracauer]

Hi,

do you guys have any up-to-date opinions on a good notebook for
FreeBSD-current?

Here is what I don't need:
- can be heavy
- can be big
- don't care about battery life
- can be slow
- refurbished or used OK

Here is what I want:
- quiet when not under load
- must operate in warm rooms when compiling kernels
- NVidia chipset if at all possible
- More than 1024x768 *or* working dual-head
- Firewire, USB 2.0 and/or at least two PCMCIA II slots
- $1200 - $1500 for a current model but would take a $1000 refurbished
  with slower CPU

Some Dell Inspirons fit that nicely, in particular since you can get
as much display as you want.  But a friend has 4 in the office and all
4 had to be sent to get parts replaced already.  What are your
experiences with them?

Here is a barebones kit with a 1280x1024 display:
  http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=NBEGG732C15
Anyone ever tried that?

I might chicken out and just get a random Thinkpad :-) The 23 with the
1400x1050 display sounds nice.

Martin
-- 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin Cracauer <cracauer at cons.org>   http://www.cons.org/cracauer/
 No warranty.    This email is probably produced by one of my cats 
 stepping on the keys. No, I don't have an infinite number of cats.