Describe your ideal laptop!

[taltamir]

As to tech, I'm with Taltamir: I think the big component improvement many of us are awaiting is OLED displays. I suspect Apple and premium marques will probably introduce them in Obama's second term.

One company introduced an OLED display laptop... but they saw fit to make it gimmicky, making it see through because they CAN... just because you can do something doesn't mean you should... a see through laptop display sounds good at first, but then you realize that anything behind the laptop would distort the display, light sources, people, just general background, you see it all...
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/samsungs-14-inch-transparent-oled-laptop-video/

 

[CraigRT]

Realistic laptop:

Black, or possibly a brushed finish. stylish.
Core I series, could be I5, I7
4GB RAM
dual hard drive bays, one SSD boot drive, one standard storage drive.
14-15" display, 1680x1050 display, LED
Blu-Ray drive - HDMI output with dedicated GPU
Ample USB ports, card reader, etc.
Not super heavy, like 5ish lbs or less.
Decent but doesnt have to be insane battery life (dont want bigger extra cell battery adding bulk and weight)

It would probably be a Thinkpad T series. Lenovo is my favorite brand of laptops by far.

 

[Schadenfreude]

• Aluminum or Magnesium body
• Good, stiff keyboard w/ numpad
• 13" to 15" - most likely >14" because of the numpad req
• Good, high-def screen: the last 15.4" laptop I had had 1680x1050 def, what's with the 1366 x 768 crap nowadays? I'd consider that on a 13" at most - normally I wouldn't care but w/ certain programs (like illustrator/PS) it hinders your workspace.
• Discreet GPU, preferably w/ optimus or the ATI equivalent
• Fast(er) CPU - enough to game certainly, but to also do graphic design, (light) 3D rendering . . ..
• Gobs and gobs of RAM
• Light(er) - considering what is listed, I'm not expecting a featherweight, but you never know . . ..
• Preferably free - but barring that, maybe under $1k?

 

[Conroy9]

basically the guts of the ul80jt (overclockable ulv i5/i7, optimus switchable discrete/integrated graphics, 10 hour battery life) with...

non-widescreen 1400x1050 matte lcd
4gb ram upgradable to 8gb
SSD or at least SSD hybrid (seagate momentus XL?)
blu-ray drive
<5 pounds

I think this should be possible.