I need a laptop for school, but won't be able to afford solid performance with the new Core 2's. Buy something from dell (w/e you do, don't go with toshiba, they just got a F form the BBB; they have been haveing disputes of their mail in rebates because they say they don't get them, and their customer support is considered lousy... and lenovo is a bit expensive) between the 27th of july and the 18th of august- you can get a Core (not core 2) based laptop for cheaper than now, as they'll be clearing out and switching over to core 2. also, on the ram side of things, unless dual-channel is a priority, get the smallest amount of ram possible from dell, and request it in one dimm (they'll put it in the internal slot, leaving the end-user accesable dimm expansion slot empty), and then go to newegg and buy the same ram (matching speed, 667mhz or 533mhz) in a gig for like <100 (so 512 from dell as the base, and $100 for another gig, for 1.5 gigs.) You won't be able to run dual-cannel even if you only got another 512 dimm because the timings will most likely be different, but you'll end up getting a 1.5 gigs for $100, where dell charges inordinate fees for ram, like $150 for a gig (total in the system) for DDR2667, and 300-400 for 2gigs of DDR2667.
However, in recent dell notebooks, maybe just the hi-end xps line, it is possible to upgrade both the cpu and ram, as the case opens to replace the cpu (they are using sockets on the motherboards now, instead of soldering or hotwiring cpus...) and both dims are user-accessable from the outside.
-Because this notebook is for business, graphics is another consideration. Get some discrete graphics... even the ati x1400 with hypercache or w/e they call it (has some ram onboard and draws from system memory if needed) will keep loads off of your CPU and keep integrated graphics from gobbling up your ram.... the nivida 7300 is about the same as the ait x1400, maybe better- it takes ram from the system where eneded, but supplies its own gpu, keeping processing for graphics off the CPU. but you don't neet anything like the 790gs or 7900gtx...