Recommend me a laptop

[AZRedhawk44]

I've got a desktop PC and a little ASUS EeePC netbook, but I'd like to have a laptop with a bit more screen real-estate.

I don't want to break the bank on this, so no high-fallutin' AlienWare stuff need apply.

My intent is for the core OS to be Linux, running either a WINE emulation layer and/or VirtualBox for any windows apps needed.  I'll probably end up needing a lot of Windows apps, being a MS-centric DBA and developer.  SQL, RDP, Visual Studio, Office (genuine office being necessary due to DLL dependencies).

Bundled software is not an issue:  I've got an MSDN subscription that gets me all the software I could ever need.

I'm looking for a laptop with good screen real estate (15-17" widescreen format), 4GB of RAM, and hardware inherently compatible with Linux.  A dual-core CPU would be nice.  If it has a video card capable of running World of Warcraft under Linux (I've heard this is possible if you've got the files after already installing in a Windows environment), that would be nice.  Nothing uber-game-able, but nothing that is teh suk either.

Recommendations?

[sanglant]

i can't remember where but i was looking at a 19inch(18.5 vis) lately that i could have sworn was less than a grand.

18.4 at 800 is amd

i think this is it. did they change the size to 18.4?

[Hawkmoon]

I recently picked up a Toshiba laptop for my wife (who is not a power user) NEW from Toshiba's web site for under $400.

[tyme]

lenovo or maybe asus or acer.

If your primary use is development and your primary development environment is windows, I wouldn't run windows inside a VM.  I'm a linux advocate of course, but typical laptop disks are low-rpm.  Virtualized I/O on top of that is too slow.  If Wine won't work, I would use Winderz as your primary OS.