Hey there,
I definately agree with you that self-built computers are usually better since you get what you want and not what someone else has already made for you. However, with laptops, that's usually a lot harder... I can't even imagine what kind of heat sink laptop processors have... let alone installing it.
On the other hand... the bookstore at UBC (the university that I'm attending) gives great discounts on Apple products. I know I'm gonna get some flames for this, but I could get a PowerBook G4 1.25GHz, 512 MB PC3200 DDR Ram, 80 GB HD, and a ATI Radeon 9700 Mobility for $2000 CAD. That's a pretty nice steal for that you're getting. It'll do just about anything that you can do with a PC laptop, and it's got great battery lifetime (comparable to Centrino). Another plus... no viruses... no spyware. My friend's got his Apple computer running with an uptime of 3 months and 18 days now... pretty impressive to anyone.
My next desktop computer is probably going to be self built, and my next laptop is going to be a new G5-M based (not the power hungry, water cooled G5's, I'm talking peak usage of 10W for the processor) PowerBook. That'll be in 3 years though, when I'm almost done my degree and I've saved up the money for that...
