I want to buy a laptop. The 2 laptops I am considering are:

1) Dell Inspiron E1705 with 256mb ATI Mobility Radeon x1400
2) Gateway NX860X with 128mb Nvidia GeForce Go 7600

The internal laptop hd will be my primary (XP Prof) and an attached external hd will be my secondary (some Linux flavor, probably MEPIS, Ubuntu or PCLos). Windows will be for games (not a ******** gamer) and TV (via tuner card). Linux for just about everything else (including playing DVD movies and MP3 files).

Questions:

1) Video: Assuming that the graphics card is what will "make or break" my choice, should I go with the ATI card or Nvidia card? I want something easy to work with. . .it has to have good quality. . .but does not have to be the "best." It must be friendly to both Windows and Linux.

2) Choice: Is there a website I can go to where I can have a laptop built with more "choices" than what Dell and other big companies give you?

Thanks! I look forward to reading your replies!

Why would you want to saddle yourself with an extra HD to lug around? Laptop drives are large enough now to comfortably fit both OSes, and you can share any user data.

I don't know what kind of choices you want, but Asus, for instance, makes barebones notebooks to which you (or a dealer) add CPU, memory, hard drive, etc. The graphics card is rarely swappable, though.

I have had both ATI & Nvidia in laptops and both have performed fine while being quite straight forward. ATI drivers are generally open, while Nvidia drivers are proprietory.

That being said, I still lean towards Nvidia because they seem to be pretty aggresive in updating their drivers.

I've also got to agree with dthurston. Get a drive big enough for both OSes and a data partition. Use your second HD for backup & archives. Don't overlook your data partition though...

In my experience, Windows XP hogs a lot of disk space.If you are only using Windows for games and TV, then it might be a good idea to get a copy of Windows 98 or 2000. As for drivers, you can usually get everything you need off the manufacturer`s website.