Thank you everyone for all of your input.

After further researching the matter I found out that AMD had released an Athlon 3700+ DTR (desk-top-replacement) about 2 months ago. It turns out that the performance is actually almost exactly the same as the desk-top 3700+ but with better power-management. I was happy to learn after board-browsing that even though the HP customer service reps had no idea, HP is actually using the DTR chip and people are getting about 3-4 hours of battery life with the 12-cell. No other notebook with that kind of processing power exists with that kind of battery life that I could find, and definitely not at that price. The notebook also has 2 antennaes for the wireless card and stereo speakers as well as other nice things like S-video, built-in 5-in-1 card reader, bluetooth, etc.

So after talking to the wife - who said, "Merry Christmas," I took the plunge and ordered the HP zv5000z from Costco, which has a 6 mo return policy - just in case something better comes out. I also got the smallest hard disk and smallest memory chip since I found out I can get a much faster hard drive (7200) and more memory (1G and 256MB) for the same price as 1G if I replace the disk and add a 1G chip myself. The biggest adjustment is going to be the huge size. I also found out Costco has the student/teacher Office addition cheaper than the Microsoft site and so I'm getting Powerpoint for $30 more than the Basic Office from HP.

Anyways, thank you everyone again for all the advice/feedback and I'll let you know how it is when I get it.

Thanks,
MGP