Dear Lazyweb,

After 3.5 years with a crappy laptop ($600 Gateway special, circa 2006), I'm looking to replace it with another laptop which is not quite so crappy.

My complaints about my current laptop are:
1) crappy keyboard, really crappy
2) crappy battery (no longer in production)
3) a bit big
4) a bit heavy

To help me in this quest, I'd like to ask the oh so knowledgeable lazyweb what brand of laptop they would favor. I've tried amazon, newegg, cnet, and google, but laptop models come out so fast that it's almost impossible to get a brand level gestalt of current brand quality.

The most important factors are (1) and (2) above. I want a nice keyboard, and long battery life. I also need speakers that actually make noise. Everything else is negotiable.

Favorite brands anyone?

Through a circuitous route I bring you:

"synaesthetes"

This is a class of people who have atypical brains with more gray matter, and a more global wiring scheme. They also have the ability to assign sensory stimulation to different sensory inputs. For example, they can wire their own brains to see new symbols in a color of their choosing.

Professor X, where are you?

[via http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ podcast]