I like my Toshiba :) They're decently priced, and work fairly well. They also have decent sized HDs. The only drawback is that it looses its charge easily when not plugged in, but it's not a major drama (just that I've noticed it more than when I had my Dell).

Also dual core processors, as far as I know, are standard now. Also also yes yes a thousand times yes to not having Vista! It sucks donkey balls. I'm not keen on Windows 7, either (we use it at work) because it's too like the most recent Mac OS and I didn't like that much either. But that's just me. So yes to 7, no to Vista (Microsoft are trying to pretend it didn't even happen, lol).