One gotcha on Mac books is lack of a 9 pin serial port, which can be a
real show stopper if you are going to do configuration of network
equipment (Switches, routers, etc...) So you'll want a USB serial port
adapter thing.

My coworker has a 17" Mac Book Pro. All I can say is: luggable. The
thing is huge. It's not a laptop you will want to use in a coach
airline seat. Battery life seems really good for a "laptop" of this
size.

I use a Dell Latitude D610, and the more I have to lug it around the
more I want to get a smaller laptop next time. We've gotten a couple
Latitude D420s in and they are very nice little laptops. Like the Mac
Books the D420 lacks a serial port. It also lacks an internal optical
drive. You can get the media base, which is a portable docking station
thing with the optical drive and some extra USB, video, etc. ports
(similar to ultra portable Thinkpads) or you can get the D/Bay option
which is an external optical drive that connects via the D420's
powered USB2 port. I've setup the media bay and the media dock, and my
personal preference is the D/Bay. With the D420 a D/Port docking
station and large LCD monitor are a must for your "home base."

I haven't played with Linux on the latest Dell laptops, but I didn't
have too many issues when I tried a Knoppix CD in my D610. D620 and
D420 use the same video, network, etc. devices as the D610 (newer
revisions harder, need latest drivers, but at least I only have to
maintain one version of the driver for these systems.) If you're
thinking Linux + Dell, make sure you pick the Intel option for
wireless, not the Dell branded option.

With Parallels Desktop on Mac I've noticed some downright flaky
network behavior in the Windows XP guest OS. For whatever reason the
WinXP guest will not run an install over the network (using windows
file sharing), even if it's a very small (under 5mb) install. If you
copy the install files from the Windows share to the WinXP Guest's
Hard Drive, everything works fine. Besides that issue Parallels has
worked very well and it's impressively fast.

The Parallels network bug would be a show stopper for me. I use VMWare
to test automatic network installs all the time. If you're using
Parallels just to run Windows or Linux to use Windows/Linux specific
programs you should be fine.

If you go the BootCamp route you'll want to setup your dual boot
Operating Systems right away when you get your Mac. If you start using
your Mac it's possible that your hard drive could be come too
fragmented for BootCamp to repartition your hard drive for the
BootCamp operating systems. If this happens, you pretty much have to
reinstall OSX before you're able to use Boot Camp.

-- 
Andrew S. Zbikowski | http://andy.zibnet.us
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