7) MSI
I own the GT725-074US which has GREAT specs for the price. Just about unbeatable if you can live with an ATI mobile GPU (linux catalyst is beyond awful!).
The build quality of the 725/1722(the generic chassis for system builder but it comes with a 9600M instead of 4850) is very good, and certainly better than their 625(9800M GS)/1651(9600M GT) chassis.
If I were going for nVidia, I'd likely go ASUS G50VT w/9800M even though it's 15" it's more like a bricklike 17" but build quality would be more consistent plus ASUS has a better warranty, 1y accidental + additional year parts & labor v. 1y period MSI (in US, 2y in ROW IIRC).
Core 2 in the PM45 config won't be going away for over a year if you want to upgrade CPU, although the only thing that I'd consider is the QX9300 as the 9000 is too slow(2GHz) or the P9500.
At the end of the day I'm really only most likely to upgrade DRAM to 8GB though so the core i<whatever it is> mobile just isn't worth it ATM, and DDR2 DRAM isn't likely to go away for a while anyways.
LED displays: probably more $$$ and most of the mfgs are low-cost guys, although in the case of the system builder chassis e.g. Sager/Clevo, MSI 1651/1722/etc. series I'm surprised that there are more LCD options as their configs can become quite expensive, esp. Sager/Clevo.
My main beef with MSI is the lack of BIOS changelogs(even their mb BIOS changelogs are crap, while nb are non-existent) and in the case of the 725 the older than dirt "official" MSI catalyst drivers and inability to install generic catalysts w/o tweaking the installer.