After I get everything established and stuff I plan to save up for a new laptop. I still love my Inspiron but it's a bit dated, to be honest. After all, I've had it for about three years now...not too surprising that it'd be a bit outdated.
I was considering picking up a MacBook. After looking through the Apple store, I quickly reconsidered. Seriously, what is up with their prices? It's extortion! It's precisely why my next laptop is going to be another Dell.
A high-resolution, UWXGA 17" display is an absolute must for me. Apple's only model with a 17" display costs a whopping $2800, plus another $100 upgrade is required to bring it up to UWXGA (normally, its resolution is only 1680x1050...reasonably high, yes, but not high enough for how I work). Just as a reference, the system had a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, a 5400rpm 200GB hard drive, a DVD writer, and a GeForce 8600M GT. Not bad.
I went right over to Dell after headdesking over the price and came to the conclusion that I could get a system with the same processor, the same memory size and speed, a faster, 7200rpm hard drive, the UWXGA display and, wait for it, dual GeForce 8700M GT cards -- A FAR BETTER SYSTEM in overall performance -- for something like $400 cheaper. Wow.
I can't wait until the novelty of Apple wears off and they actually have to start trying to be competitive.