Right now I would recommend Compaq and HP Pavilion notebooks available in market which are with good specs. They would be Dell's config in same price.
Otherwise if you need customization then go for dell for sure you will have wide range of choices as per your thinking.
So, first check your budget. My suggestion is get a notebook with decent or good onboard gfx provided because running vista would need much better gfx card than general onboard intel x3100, this would again help you to keep your lappy in work nxt 3-4 years easily.