IBM has taken a stake in the Chinese company that has been building many of the notebooks all along.

Also, IBM has committed for now to continue the service and warranty in the US.

Since most notebooks now only have a 2-3 year productive lifespan (especially as Microsoft Longhorn 64 bit is coming by 2007) that should be ok for you during that time span.

IBM's are more pricey for what you get but they do have superior cases, self-parking hard drives and superior keyboards.

They were ranked #2 in service only to Apple for notebooks so if IBM continues the service/warranty in the US they should not fall that far in the short term.