Anyway, since I'm reasonably brain dead and pissed at the moment to not care about the time I'm about to waste on this(I'm not gonna bother with the parts you'll have no choice in or at least basically no choice in), here:
First thing first:
I'm guessing you are American, right? Well then. You do indeed have a lot of choices in picking and mixing laptops with a variety of parts you wish for, as your market is large enough to justify that, at least for the higher end options. You can customize quite a few models directly through the manufacturer's pages for some of the models, just go to Sony Vaio's, Dell's, HP's... et cetera web page and give it a look. In other cases, that is not always an option, then you can look at some resellers that do custom jobs, such as xoticpc.com. There's bound to be more, but I can't be arsed to look for em and they're the only ones that come up during discussion.
Now then for the parts themselves:
1st.
Let's start with displays. They affect the price of the end product by quite a lot and there's quite a bit of a difference in there to choose from, and to be honest, it's something that requires quite a bit more thought than most average buyers are willing to give it. Current laptops basically come with one of the three options for resolutions 1366x768, 1600x900, 1920x1080. The resolution is fairly important. You can use, work and play on a 1366x768 screen. But to be honest. It's a bit of a pain. For my own tastes, it's simply not comfortable. If all you want to do is watch some anime now and then and surf the web for a bit, 1366x768 will do. But it's not recommended. However, that is still an option if you intend to keep the laptop mostly plugged in into something else like a monitor on the desktop or the tv while you're watching stuff on it. Given such a scenario, it is wiser to save the money and get something more powerful. But if you intend to use the laptop more as a laptop, rather than a tower you can chug into a backpack, I'd recommend going for either the 1600x900 or the 1920x1080 screen.
The screens tend to come in two flavours, anti-glare(matte) or glare. Simply put, matte screens diffuse the reflections by having an extra layer, glare ones do not. And given poor circumstances, you're going to be looking at a mirror.
Now it isn't exactly as clear cut what to get. Glare screens provide more saturated and deeper colours than matte screens, they also tend to look a bit better in general, they have that nice glassy look to them. Also, given smart positioning of the laptop and sufficient brightness will generally remove the glare or at least minimize it. However, if you intend to move the laptop about, a matte screen becomes more advantageous as few people posses the ability to tell the sun to move a few degrees to the right. Matte screens are also quite a bit more "true" in their representations of colours. If you intend to dabble in design and the like, What you see on a matte screen will represent that which you'll see on the printed page more realistically. I personally highly prefer matte screens.
Now there's still different types of panels to cover and 3d and the like. But chances are, you're not going to get too many options here. So fuck it.
2nd.
Network card.
This is probably the main reason why I suggest people to get customized laptops, as the cards that come with the general laptops are frankly horrendous and given that the investment is cheap, there's no real reason not to do it. If you do go the custom route, upgrade it. If you don't use BT a lot, go for the 3x3 antenna arrangement.
3rd.
Storage.
These come in one of three groups. HDDs/SSHDs(This option is basically the same as a HDD + mSATA SSD cache, just generally cheaper as it's mass produced, but it's also more limited in its options)/SSDs. Their use is pretty self explanatory, so I won't bother with that. What I will say is this; The ability to use an application or the ability to run some game is in no way reflective of the type of storage media you use, what it will do, is make the process more bearable. So, what concerns the general user, it is probably the second most important feature in how a computer feels, right after the quality of the display. Generally, what you want will depend on three things. The size of your wallet, the number of bays the hdd supports and the intended use. If you have only a single bay. I recommend going for an SSHD(You get to choose from the momentus xt or the momentus xt, not exactly hard to figure out) or it's equivalent(given the existence of mSATA support), If you have only a single bay, it is unwise to fill it with a SSD, unless you intend to use it as a office work horse and nothing else, as space will quickly become an issue, and if not that, the price. Given two or more bays, go for a dedicated SSD(~60gigs will do for an office laptop, at least 120-128 gigs are recommended if you intend to install games on it, 240-256 are recommended 300+ models aren't worth their price) and large dedicated storage HDD or HDDs. Given the requirement for more storage, you can exchange your ODD(cd/dvd/bluray/whatever player) for another HDD bay.
4th.
Memory.
The frequency and delay is of no real noticeable difference. Just go with the most bang for buck option(1600/CL11(for laptops) as of writing). The added cost of getting anything better does not justify the meagre performance boost with the current architecture. However, integrated graphics don't have a memory of their own and if you need to boost the igpus performance, upgrading the ram is about the only option you have. As for the amount, 2gigs are enough for an office workhorse, 4gb for a general multimedia laptop, 8 gigs for the general cutting edge machine. If you are the sort of person that opens up 15 programmes at the same time while working on a 20000x20000 paintings in photoshop like Kitamusume, you will need to go for 12-36gigs. But that is of absolutely no concern to the general user. I personally have yet to ever use up more than 5 gigs. Also, the system uses as much ram as it needs. You won't gain a dime from overdoing it, just a lighter pocket. If you don't have a use for 16 or so gigs, don't get it. RAM discs are of no concern for laptops.
5th.
CPU.
There's really not much to say here. AMD is a great option for budget builds, however, they've nothing to offer for the higher end market. Generally speaking, there's little to nothing to be said about laptop cpu's nowadays. If all you need is a workhorse to watch some movies and surf the web, absolutely any intel cpu or any A series APU can deal with that. MS Office and youtube runs just as good on an A4 as it does on an i7. If the question is on gaming, I'd say go for an i5. That will basically satisfy the needs of anything currently on the shelves at the performance levels expected of laptops, if you plan to use the same system in 4 years time, I'd recommend going for the i7 quads. While multi threading is not yet a necessity, it's common enough in the line up of new games to justify one for future proofing. If you intend to render or compile, you get to choose from a recommended option of an i7, another i7 and another i7, not much thought required there.
6th.
GPU
Higher end AMD integrated cards are enough for basic low res gaming(Ones that come with the A8/A10). However, they aren't exactly great solutions and dedicated cards are still recommended if you intend to give that hobby a bit more time than an hour a week. If you don't game, integrated cards are more than enough to satisfy anything you could probably need of a computer, except in some really niche cases. The hierarchy of the current gen cards is as follows:
Anything bellow a HD7670m/GT630m is an office card. It's not designed with gaming in mind, it's only in that laptop to for the ability to run several presentation screens of it. Don't expect otherwise. (Yes, I know you can theoretically run games on them, but you can also theoretically enter a mule in to a horse race, there's not enough of a power difference there to justify them over igpus as gaming cards). HD7670m-HD7770m/GT630m-GTX660m(Generally, it would end with the GT650m, but since the GTX660m is basically the same card just with slightly higher clocks - fuck it.) are the mainstream gaming cards. They are intended to be played on lower and medium resolutions and it will deal with the games in ranking order(The 630m/7670m is enough for gaming at low/high settings(depending on conditions and titles, the 650m/7770m should be powerful enough to max them out). The HD7850m-HD7970m/GTX660m-GTX680m are the performance/enthusiast series. These cards should allow for comfortable gaming at FHD resolution. And the 7970m/680m(Given a 1920x1080 resolution) should max out anything that's currently under the sun.
Now then for general pointers on laptop GPUs from Nvidia and Ati. Nvidia cards have better driver/linux support(Doesn't really matter to 75% of the population), physx(doesn't matter in 90% of all cases, and even when it does, it's not huge enough to proclaim the second coming of Jesus), better 3d support(doesn't matter in 95% of cases) and it's integrated/dedicated switching system optimus is superior to AMD's enduro. (Matters to a lot of people, doesn't matter if you just intend to keep it on the dedicated card)
Ati cards have better multi monitor support (doesn't matter if you don't go for the performance cards, as they'll be too weak to make any use of it), produces far better "universal" cards, with the 600 series, Nvidia basically said this: You want a workstation? Get a Quadro. Want to game? GeForce. Want to do both? Fuck you. (Doesn't matter to 75% of the population). Ati laptop cards tend to be cheaper than the Nvidia counterparts.
Now extensions, ports, audio, battery life, cooling, case, build quality, guarantees all should should deserve a mention. But I won't as it is a bit too circumstantial on the specific model in question and should be considered on a case-by-case basis and due to the fact that you've got no choice in the matter. You get what you get with a specific model. The only thing to say here is that there are 3 groups of laptops available: multimedia, business and consumer. Business models lack power, but they offer the best build quality, guarantees and support. Multimedia laptops are the best at everything laptops, however they don't excel at anything in particular. And consumer models are shit, but they are cheap. I suppose one can make a fourth group of gaming models: they tend to be heavier than a rhinoceros and be designed to appeal to 12 year olds. However, they are powerful and well built, but that's mostly just to justify the overblown price.
And here you go, a wall of text that I intend to copy paste in the future.
