I posted an answer about the 17" LCD in the other thread.

Sony has had a 17" LCD Pentium M model out for awhile (but priced over $2500).

The Pentium M cpu will give you the best battery life, a performance comparison of 1.5-2x its mhz speed in comparison to a Pentium 4M cpu.

Also, the Pentium M notebook will be lighter than its Pentium 4M counterpart as less space is needed for the cpu cooling -- Pentium 4Ms run very hot and are really only intended for desktops (called Pentium 4 there - Pentium 4M has some power saving features but not much)

Just keep in mind that a 17" notebook will be very bulky and heavy to carry around unless it is the amazing Apple 17" powerbook at 6.9 pounds (but also over $2500).

You can still fit a 15.4" widescreen or 15" square in a notebook backpack but I am not aware of one for a size larger than that (but there are satchels of course).

But if you intend to use it mostly at home or work and want the superior battery life (to use wi-fi unplugged) it will be better than a Pentium 4M. And, you will still have the 128mb dedicated video option not available in most Pentium M notebooks.

The only thing you really lose versus the Pentium 4M is hyperthreading but that is negligible unless you are running multiple programs heavily all the time.

The 2mb L2 system cache (on the Pentium M chip itself) is one of the reasons the Pentium M can run much faster than its mhz speed in comparison to a Pentium 4M.