On the same subject of purchasing new laptops, I'm going to go hunting for one early next year and was wondering if it was going to be more feasible and more practical to buy an 'already-put-together' laptop offered by one of the companies such as Dell, Compaq, HP, ASUS, etc. or whether I could get a better deal from a computer store who have built laptops from random components tailored to suit individual customers.

I used to build computers as a hobby 4-5 years ago and I too have very little knowledge these days on what the most popular pieces of hardware people recommend you should have in your machines. It can be a confusing process, but I think I would need a set up which would have at least a capable graphics card that wasn't built onboard with the laptops motherboard.