I think I have to register a vested interest before answering this; I work for Toshiba in the UK.

For obvious reasons, I can't, therefore, comment on the Dell. Nor am I going to sell the virtues of our laptops, since I reckon we've already got a pretty good reputation and there's little useful I can add to that.

What I would say, though, is that of our lineup, my choice'd probably be a Tecra. Certainly most of our models will be up to the job, quite a few of them (Qosmio included) have been designed first and foremost as home machines. The Satellite Pro and Tecra are the models targetted at mainstream business apps, with the latter being the beefiest. Certainly, I use a Tecra myself, and we've plenty within the department running multiple VMs, so we know that aspect works fine.

As for buying, I'd suggest you simply take a look around our main website at http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/. There's a facility for answering questions to see which laptop best fits your needs (the "Help me choose" link in the middle of the page). There are, of course, also links to let you buy online. However, if you've got any questions after that, you can always post them here or send me a PM and I'll do my best to help.