Suitable laptop

From what I've seen on here and various other tech sites, a fair amount of people are using the Dell XPS systems just fine to run things like autocad. As long as you have a dedicated graphics card with some "beef" and a decent processor (personally, I'd go after an i7 if you want it to last for 3-4 years), you should be good to go.

I heard that new arrandale processors would soon be launched, how are those processors better than present core i7 processors?(based on the fact that they 2 core processors & i7 are quad core processors.)

You can buy a hi end Dell or boutique brand but why go to the middleman when you can buy it from the people who made it for those guys ?

The vast majority of laptops on the market are manufactured by a small handful of Original Design Manufacturers (ODM) who do have direct distributors in NA, Europe and all over the world

* Quanta sells to (among others) HP/Compaq, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu, Acer, NEC, Gateway and Lenovo/IBM - note that Quanta is currently (as of August, 2007) the largest manufacturer of notebook computers in the world.
* Compal sells to Toshiba, HP/Compaq, Acer, and Dell.
* Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) sells to HP/Compaq, Dell, IBM, NEC, Acer, and Lenovo/IBM.
* Flextronics (former Arima Computer Corporation notebook division) sells to HP/Compaq, NEC, and Dell.
* ECS sells to IBM, Fujitsu, and Dell.
* Asus sells to Apple (iBook), Sony, and Samsung.
* Inventec sells to HP/Compaq, Toshiba, and BenQ.
* Uniwill sells to Lenovo/IBM and Fujitsu.
* Clevo sells to Sager, and a whole list of boutique shops

Here's what I am grabbing for my CAD guys at the moment.

17" 1920 x 1080 - http://www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=serial-price...

15" - 1920 x 1080 - http://www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=serial-price...