If you are in the western US Fry's Electronics has Fujitsu models at retail you can try out. There not available at many other places retail at all.
Fujitsus are made in Japan so they do seem to have good quality but they are a smaller volume seller in the US so they are not rated with the major companies for service/reliability so you can really only go by Cnet posts or other forums rather than relying on Consumer Reports/PC magazine surveys for the larger company performance.
Also, any Fujitsu notebook under $2,000 has only shared/integrated video memory and you can get dedicated video memory on other brands for under $1500.
If you don't understand the difference between shared and dedicated video memory you had better research this issue as you cannot add dedicated video later to a notebook like you can on a desktop. You are sunk with what you invest in on a notebook for now up front.
Fujitsu does have models over $2000 that have dedicated video if you are willing to pay that much...
I'm looking at the Fujitsu S6231 Lifebook (as well as the Dell 600m and 700m) for medical school. The price is a bit steeper on the former, though overall I seem to like it better. Any thoughts on whether the price will drop, or on a preference between the three? I need at least a 1.5GHz processor, and as big a hard drive as I can get.

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