When buying a laptop, most of us make may unquestioned assumptions. I found a good artice at PowerNotebooks.com that is a must read for anyone that wants to buy a laptop. Enjoy....

The Secret Truth about...
Who Makes Laptops
This money-saving article brought to you by PowerNotebooks.com

Virtually none of the namebrands manufacture their own laptops. The few notable exceptions are IBM, Acer, Toshiba, Twinhead and Apple. Yet, even Toshiba and Apple do not make all of their own. All of the rest buy their laptops from what is called an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). Then, they install the hard drive (usually an IBM, Hitachi, or Toshiba), processor (Pentium x, Celeron, or AMD) and system memory (SDRAM). Installing these last three components is very easy to do, and leaving these for "the last minute" allows for a wide range of custom configurations.

Once these companies add in these three components, they have a complete laptop. They then put their label on it and market it.

Each ODM sells its computers to several different OEMs.

For example an ODM named Compal (not to be confused with Compaq) makes the Dell Inspiron 5000, the PowerNotebooks.com PowerPro III:567, the Sceptre SoundX S6600 (14.1") and S6900 (15"). These are all the same laptop, just with different names on them! Compal  also makes some of the Hewlett Packard line of laptops, and they make the Sceptre SoundX 5200.

Quanta makes the Dell Latitude. GVC makes the Micron Transport Treck and Treck 2. Compaq is actually manufactured by companies called Inventec (Armada and Prosignia lines) and Arima (Presario line).

Sager Computers are made by Clevo (the 9820 and 2850) and Kapok (the rest of the line). Clevo and Kapok are different Divisions of the same company and are also one of the largest, and best, in the world. Other ODM names are Mitech, Kapok, Clevo, FIC, Twinhead, and Uniwil--just to name a few.

Some call this the "Dirty little secret of the Laptop Industry."

So, what does this mean to you? It means don't get hung up on the brand name when looking to buy, because the company who owns that name probably didn't build your dream-machine laptop. Instead, focus on these three things:

The warranty: Compare warranties among different vendors.
Features: Does it do all you need? Don't go overboard, but don't sacrifice.
Price: Are you paying for a name, or for features and warranty? Remember, the name does not differentiate the machine from any other.