With the laptops it is =far= less of an issue; you simply can't pick and choose parts, as each laptop model is more or less custom. And laptop memory also tends to be more reliable, simply because it has to deal with harsher design specifications. Where you tend to find the 'Uncle Kim Special' components is in the minitowers. Who made that board?! Wait. That wasn't an ABit board of about 18 months past, was it? Abit was one of the companies that -really- got burned by a little industrial espionage. It seems that there was a company in Mainland China turning out electrolytic capacitors for the mobo power supply smoothing (all the big puppies usually clustered around the CPU). Only problem was, the formula being used was stolen from a Taiwanese company, and the thief missed a few pages of it. A lot of the oddball problems with the Athlon boards were finally traced back to those capacitors degrading, and allowing Strange Things to happen. Everything from bursting cans to smoking the CPU or one of the bridge chips....and with the southbridge, taking any IDE devices with it.... The intel boards didn't suffer as badly, as the P4 didn't have the same power demands that Athlons do. But there are still far too many of those flakey boards out in the channel....although most of what's left is starting to show up at the computer shows....