I second teh DV9700t from Costco. Here's the specs.
T9300 2.5Ghz with 6mb
3GB ram
2x120GB 7200RPM drives (Yes dual and now replaced with a 200GB 7200rpm and a 500GB 5400rpm for almost a 700GB laptop internal config!!!)
8600GS 512mb Ram
and the 1650x1080 screen.
Vista 64 bit to boot.
Oh yeah and Blu-ray player. Works great.
All for around $1700 from costco and well worth the $100 membership.

I'm a big fan of Lenovo's Thinkpad laptops, though I've not used them with Vegas (I too have a DV9000 HP that I'm more or less a fan of) with dual 100 GB 7200 Internal Drives and a lot of external storage). The nice thing about the lenovo's is that they are build quality big time ( at least the thinkpad line is/has been for me and my family/friends ). Vegas isn't hardware driven, so put your money into the Processor, and RAM, make sure to have dual HDD's as that's just common sense if you want performance from any computer, and I think I heard someone saying about an MPEG 2 accelerator card hooked up to a Vegas laptop back at NAB so it's possible there will be an expresscard that will enhance MPEG2 playback in the future.

Dave

Thank you for your responses. I had been given advice from computer gurus, but none of them were video editors.
I had not considered dual drives, so I will keep shopping and set aside more money for this purchase.
I haven't read the link to a previous discussion yet, but will do that now.

Thanks again

Here's another one you might want to look at. It allows up to three hard drives of up to 320Gig each

ANY duel core (minus any Pentium D's) & 1gb RAM at least. then the question is do you want to spend extra on large internal storage? I recommend an external drive.

I too have been considering a notebook for my next upgrade. In addition to dual HDs, my ideal notebook would support dual external monitors and a docking station. I haven't found the right one yet.

jerry

you need to consider what you want to do with the laptop, much more specifically. If you want to edit "on the go" odds are you'd want minimum external devices, good battery life, wifi, built in bburner, etc. that's what I'd want: I have a desktop for editing all nice & customized, a laptop would be something I'd take to a client's place.

If it's your primary editing device & will NOT move around, then treat it like a desktop & make sure it supports more external devices so you can easier expand as needed, but if you plan on taking it around expect to not use those external devices as it will be like moving a desktop, just the tower will be smaller.

I hadn't really thought about dual monitors with the laptop because I have them on my desktop, but it would be nice to have the capability.

I would use the new laptop for editing video when away on a job or while traveling, but most editing would probably still be done at home on the desktop.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Larry

if that were me I'd get a sub-$1k duel core with a DVD burner. get an external drive. then all set. Oh, and a track ball. :)