I'm in the market for a new laptop. What brands to you suggest? Where is the best place to buy one?
My budget is under $1500.

Sager

Apple intel MacBook.

Dell

Toshiba

IBM

Sager

Dell.
whatever brand you get, get the 2-3 year warranty

Quoted: ....Apple intel MacBook.....

-Ehhh, maybe not. The estimated price is $2000, ain't it? Are they even taking orders? And the ones out for review seem to be prototypes anyway (with proto-typical problems).

A geek.com story notes that Intel has found 34 CPU logic errors in the new dual-core already,
geek.com/news/geeknews/2006Jan/bch20060123034350.htm

and MacWorld testing only found it 25% faster than the iMac G5 in most realistic uses.
www.macworld.com/2006/01/features/imaclabtest1/index.php
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There's a lot of problems right now, attempting a new CPU and a new OS at the same time is pretty daring. Certainly a lot of these matters will be fixed soon, but I would at least wait until the CPU is 100% corrected. The software can be updated online.
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My daughter bought a Dell Inspiron laptop two years ago.  Three total meltdowns plus a hard drive crash later it's been retired.  She bought the extended warranty and Dell fixed it each time but she was still without a computer for a week after each crash while waiting for Dell's "next business day" response.

She has an IBM now and has had no problems.

Toshiba, the two I have owned have never quit are as fast as they were coming out of the box. The Dell I owned got shipped back twice and refunded.

Dell is the Abosolute Vodka of the computer industry....

Toshiba is my vote. I have personal experience with at least 12 new ones over the past year and I have only had two fail and both were from abuse.

Sony has a nice notebook and the price reflects how much they think of it.

I have NEVER seen a Dell notebook that impressed me in any way and I have seen high failure rates out of them.

+1 on the extended 2-3 year accidental damage warranty.

Toshiba is my choice.

IBM doesn't make laptops anymore, they sold their PC business to the chinese.

Still the same product though, so they should still be a good choice. Not like 90% of the parts in any other brand don't already come from china anyway.

Save your money and get a nice used one with a BRAND new hard-drive trade every 16-24 months, sell for around 1/2 to 3/4 what you have into it.
Oh IBM is the way to go

I have heard from a couple Japanese people that there, Panasonic laptops are considered to be the best, and they're always among the top-rated. They tend to be expensive certainly, might not be one in the OP's price range, but anyway I'm just sayin'....

In the US you don't see a lot of Panasonics. You almost have to buy through a grey importer, and the instruction manuals will all be in Japanese. And I don't even know how the warranties are handled.
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Quoted: I'm in the market for a new laptop. What brands to you suggest? Where is the best place to buy one? My budget is under $1500.

I love my Acer that I got from Newegg.  I did pony up for model that is basically a full gaming system and was a little over your budget, but check out this one out for less than $1200 - AMD 64 1.6GHz, 512 MB DDR, 100 GB HD, DVD/RW Multi, ATI 700m graphics w/64MB RAM, and the 15.4" WXGA TFT display is super bright and clear.  Plus it comes with XP Pro.  Here's one for about a grand.

If you want something under $900 and don't want the wide-screen, this one will probably fit your bill.  And if you gotta have Centrino...


I've gotten extremely good servive from Newegg in the past with no problems at all - even when I decided to return something.  Plus they have buyer-written reviews and don't edit or delete them, even if they're negative so you know what's good and what's not.