First off, I'm thinking of a Lenovo ThinkPad W700. I don't mind the large size/weight (in fact, I like a large screen), but I do want to be sure that it won't break very easily. I know that in the past, IBM ThinkPads were fairly indestructible. Is this still true of the new ones? I plan to use this for video editing and programming. I want good shader support, etc. for programming, but somewhat less for playing games. Secondly, I need to decide on a processor and video card. For a processor, I am deciding between: Intel Core2 Duo processor T9900 (3.06GHz 1066MHz 6MBL2) Intel Core 2 Quad Core Processor Q9000 (2.00GHz 1066MHz 6MBL2) [add $150.00] Is the quad core worth it? Will I actually get use out of this for video editing/rendering or just running programs in general, or is it a waste of time? Are, perhaps, both of these processors actually terrible? I just want to be sure. As for video cards, I have these two choices: NVIDIA Quadro FX 2700M 48-core CUDA parallel computing processor 512MB (dedicated) NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M 128-core CUDA parallel computing processor 1GB (dedicated) [add $700.00] On the NVIDIA website it appears that the main difference is the number of cores and the memory. But how big of a difference will this be in practice? I know that parallelization is one of the main features of GPU computing, but I'm less sure of what is actually reasonable, and which one is better for the price. I am under the impression that the Quadro cards are not as good for game compatibility, but this isn't too much of an issue for me. Are there any things I really need to concern myself with when considering a Quadro card over, say, a GeForce or AMD cards? I appreciate any input. Also, any good links for comparisons of mobile hardware is appreciated as well.

Unless you have software that you KNOW will use the quad core fully and take great advantage from it, and that is the software you want to use so often for the computer, then yes go with the lower clocked quad.

Any other time you should go with the higher clocked dual, as it is far, far more likely to show better performance for most programs.

Thank muchly. I figured that would probably be the case. For programs that do take "full" advantage of all four cores, would the performance boost be significant? It seems to me that even if all four were working perfectly in parallel (which doesn't happen in real life), it would be like having one 8 GHz core, whereas the dual core would be like one 6 GHz core. That doesn't seem like a huge advantage even for such programs, particularly given how difficult it is to write parallel code in practice even in the best of cases.

Anyway, does anyone have video card advice? I assume some of the same logic applies, but I'm still pretty much in the dark.