I finally have a laptop: the 4G model of Asus' Eee PC. It's a lot smaller than one would expect, but it's a great machine. The screen is very readable, the keyboard is, while small, okay for typing (I'm using it to type this, in fact), and, all in all, the hardware is great. The software it comes with ... well, I'm sure that it's good for some people. Personally, I like having a full desktop, which means, in this case, eeeXubuntu. Basically, Xubuntu with tweaks so that it will work better on an Eee.
In other news, a week or two ago I was working on a list of components for computers in various price ranges ($500, $1,000, $2,000, and $10,000 - everything from a budget machine to an overpowered monster), and I gave up after figuring out that even a $500 computer could contain a Core 2 Duo (1.8GHz, I think it was). Computers are cheap enough that even a very minimal machine is far faster than most people would need, and after you get to $1,000 on a single machine, all you can really do is add in RAM, Hard Drives, Optical Drives, and cooling. After all, one processor is the limit on most commercial systems (server boards tend not to support SLI, which I, for one, would want).
Anyways, my intent was to make the following points: 1) anyone building a $10,000 system probably knows more than me. 2) anyone building an overpowered system for as little as possible probably knows at least as much as me. 3) anyone interested in taking my advice probably knows less than me, and thus should not be trusted to build a system from the component parts.
If anyone is really interested in my advice, speak up, and I'll give some advice. Depending on how you ask, the advice might be along the lines of "learn to spell, or get an excuse as to why you can't spell."