If you care about Soundlevels and batterylife make sure you go with a Centrino setup (the VAOIs all use intels centrino I think). Actually, the new intel Centrino Duo is reall what you should get, faster then the last one and eats even less power (which also makes for a more quiet laptop).
Annandtech review quote from January 5th, 2006:
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It's tough to argue with the numbers - at worst, Intel's Centrino Duo platform offers the same battery life as the previous generation Centrino, while outperforming it. But at best, Centrino Duo can not only offer better performance than last year's notebooks, but also longer battery life.
You really can't get say anything else - you get better performance, longer battery life and all of this at the same price as last year's notebooks; Centrino Duo is a no-brainer and it is quite possibly the strongest step into a new year that we have seen from Intel in a very long time.
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From:
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/show...px?i=2663&p=14