Comparing Prices Among Laptop Brands - Who's Cheapest?

Dells are cheap and Macs are expensive... right? The perceived cost of certain brands over others is one of computing's most enduring notions. But how true are they? I thought it was time to take a hard look at computer pricing (in this case, laptops, as they're easier to compare, features-wise) and see who really are the most and least expensive brands on the market, by comparing as closely as possible an almost-identical laptop from various "top tier" (and close second-tier) vendors.

Some ground rules: The machines were all priced on June 13, 2007. Obviously, prices change all the time, and won't be accurate for long after this post goes live. I will not be updating it every week!

All machines were configured as closely as possible to these specs, which make up a solidly-configured laptop that should suffice for any buyer: 15.4-inch widescreen display (default resolution and type), 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB RAM in 2 DIMMs, 120GB hard drive, dual-layer DVD writer, discrete graphics card (preferably a 256MB card from ATI or Nvidia), Windows Vista Home Premium, no software bundle, no warranty, no mobile broadband, default battery, 802.11a/b/g/n wireless. Where the machine I was able to configure varied from these specs (Dell offers no 2.2GHz CPU in the E1505, for example), I've noted the primary differences next to the price. All prices are direct from the manufacturer's website.

Here they are:

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch - $1,999 - Obviously includes MacOS, not Vista. Has Firewire 800 port.

Dell Inspiron E1505 - $1,299 - Only offers a 2GHz CPU but has a 160GB hard drive.

Fujitsu LifeBook A6030 - $1,449 - 2GHz CPU.

Gateway NX570X -$1,608 - 2.16GHz CPU and 128MB of video RAM. (And that includes a $200 "instant discount" which I'm not really clear on.)

HP dv6500tse - $1,522 - Only 2GHz CPU but a GPU with 383MB(!) of RAM.

Lenovo ThinkPad T61 - $1,379 - Integrated graphics.

Sony Vaio VGN-FE890 CTO - $1,760 - No 802.11n. Nvidia graphics but RAM isn't specified on the site. I had to add the price up myself because the Sony website didn't work.

Toshiba Satellite A200 - $1,318 - GPU has only 128MB of RAM.

Some interesting surprises here, and some not so interesting: Turns out the Apple was indeed the most expensive and the Dell the cheapest by a small margin. That actually shocked me, as Dell's have been quietly increasing in price over the years. Another big surprise: The Gateway was crazy overpriced and the Fujitsu, normally a budget brand, was also on the expensive side. A final, major surprise: A ThinkPad for only $80 more than a Dell? Yeah, the integrated graphics are lame, but that's still a heck of a deal.

Remember that you can save a lot of cash by shopping around. A different model machine from the same company may have only slightly fewer features but could cost hundreds less. This is just one look at the market at one point in time, and sliced a different way (say, for 14-inch screens or lower-speed CPUs) the results could have been much different.

Meanwhile, discuss amongst yourselves.