Another "What is the best laptop" question

I know, there are other similar questions out there, but none that I can find that addresses this: My faithful desktop needs to be replaced and since I am downsizing everything (as in semi-retirement) I’m looking for the best laptop to use for both a general portable and docked to my keyboard, mouse and nice, big display. I don’t need state-of-the art display on the laptop itself, but would like a 14 or 15” display. The important thing is I’d like it to come as close as possible to the performance of a desktop when doing my Photoshop, Illustrator and other publishing tasks. I don’t do 3-d or games! I supply camera-ready artwork to my printers for books and other publications and I do the cover art as well as the interior.

Is the performance of the HD the main difference in the performance of laptop and desktop CPUs? I'm actually using a well-configured P-IV desktop now, so anything better than that will work, although I'm hoping for a lot better!

Next issue is that I own tons of Windoze software and don’t want to have to replace it all, so I need to stick with a PC. Reading ads and reviews online has been of little help here, so I hope some of you professional-types can offer some suggestions!

Personally,

I have a Dell Inspiriron 1525, I also use this laptop for school as I'm a ffull time college student at Kaplan in their IT program. I got this one as a gift but it has all the power I need to run photoshop with no problem, I also do some tinkering with image ready and animation with no problems at all. I have all sorts of places to plug in different things like a mouse wireless keyboard etc. My family and I even use it as a DVD player instead of using ou normal DVD player as that is older and won't read some disks. I personally love my laptop and wouldn't trade it unless I was gettin a Wacom Cintque. Anyways, I hope this helps you out on your search

Phantom

For me? the best laptop is Apple, mac..
What yours?

godbless^^