Personally, I am a big powerbook fan too! They are the greatest. Similarly, I too ended up having to buy a PC for work. After a ton of research, I decided on buying myself a dell XPS Gen2 Laptop; now known as the XPS M170. From my experience so far, its been completely amazing. You can't beat it. In fact, on benchmark tests, this laptop out performs most desktops out there. So imagine how it would completely destroy other laptops. However, the XPS may not be the one u may like b/c it is not a small laptop. It is actually created for extreme gaming and graphics. A good place to go to do research is
www.notebookforums.com. Here everyone posts their experiences with different laptops and also give peer-to-peer help. In addition, they always POST COUPON CODES!!! I got my XPS, originally $3.5k, for 40% off with the coupon. I highly recommend you to go check that site out. Good Luck.