OT: notebook shopping

[Vaughn Treude]

Hello everybody!

I'm planning to buy a new notebook, as my Vaio is now 8 years old, and 
shows signs of getting ready to give up the ghost. (Specifically, the 
LCD backlight occasionally doesn't come on.) So I've been doing some 
serious online shopping and I'm trying to make a final decision. This 
being a computer-savvy group, I thought I'd ask for some feedback.

The goal:
As high-performance as possible for $2000 or less. In particular, I want 
to be able to boot as fast as possible. (I will of course install Linux 
and tweak it to start only the most essential services.)
I plan to make it dual-boot, because it would be useful to have Windoze 
available so I can run Visual Studio. I detest Vista, so this means the 
notebook should have XP as an available option. (If it's super-cheap, it 
_might_ be worth buying an XP CD and blasting away Vista, but I'd like 
to avoid this if possible.)

The minimum parameters:
15" wide screen WXGA+
2.4 GHz CPU
2 GB RAM
100 GB drive @ 7200 RPM
Read/write DVD.
Wireless "n" version support
Bluetooth support
2 USB ports, preferably 3.

The finalists:
Dell Inspiron 1520 - with all the options I want it's around $1500. (But 
one of the reviewers claimed its physical construction was flimsy.)
Toshiba Tecra A9 - also around $1500 with options.
Lenovo ThinkPad R61 - the fully-loaded version is on sale for around $1200.
Mac Book Pro - the 2.4GHz 15" version, with the high-speed drive option, 
is $2100, a bit out of my range. I _could_ set it up triple-boot with XP 
(and Linux, of course) which would bring it up to $2200. But I've always 
admired the Mac's design, the fact that OS X is based on Unix, and the 
Mac's excellent video-editing software. (I've been unhappy with the 
hassle of setting up this kind of stuff on Linux.) So I'm still 
considering it, but don't know if it would be worthwhile.

At the moment I'm leaning toward the Lenovo. As far as I can tell, its 
primary drawbacks are relatively short battery life, and the fact that 
it is (IMHO) one butt-ugly machine. The battery isn't that big of a 
problem, as I have two externals I bought for my ailing Sony, and I can 
live with ugly.

Any comments or relevant experiences any of you could share?
Thanks,
Vaughn