Bump because I might need this advice soon too.
Bttt
Oh, well try having your motherboard replaced twice by Dell, four months apart. I have the Dell Inspiron 600m, and so far the touchpad came lose in the casing, Dell refused to take it back because they considered it out of warranty by means of physical abuse (I hadn't ever even dropped it), the USB ports went bad, the motherboard fried twice, one of the batteries completely fizzled out (the battery was old, they shipped me an old, unused battery, like 2 years old), and ever so often the monitor flickers, primarily right when I take it off ac power.
So if these are the quality of products Dell ships, than expect for there to be problems, and expect Dell to give you the wrap-around. I had to replace the motherboard, twice, myself. I had to replace the battery, which isn't really anything difficult (actually even a "mentally challenged" person can do it). So I spent the amount of money two-fold to fix my notebook. I'm thinking about getting a sony vaio or the new T-43 Lenovo Thinkpad with 1GB RAM and ATI graphics card, 802.11a/b/g wireless built in, etc.
But yeah, and several of the top consumer advocates have come out against Dell right now. I believe there was the top one coming out either right before or right after Rush.