I would not recommend buying laptop in India.
If any of your friend is coming back from US then tell him to bring one for you.
If no one is coming in near future than you have no choice, go and get it
How much I know, Lenovo is best now days ..
I have used only Dell/Sony/HP and they seem to be fine.
HP laptop with AMD(with Windows Professional) is quite good.
I think your question should be, what features one should look for in Laptop (apart from already mentioned common configuration).
I think a laptop should be wi-fi and blue tooth enabled.
[ February 06, 2007: Message edited by: R K Singh ]