Commentards! Know a good hosting firm? Recommend a good laptop?

For a few months in 2008 Reg Hardware ran a Q&A column. The format was very simple: readers sought advice – and commentards were invited to supply answers.

Typical questions ran along the lines of:

Which top-of-the-line graphics card should I buy?

and:

How do I install fonts on my Linux Acer Aspire One?

This experiment in crowd-answering was not a great success: it was an exciting day when a Q&A got five responses.

Guess why the column didn’t run in 2009.

Fast forward to 2012 and the new El Reg Forums, where commentards are beginning to set up their own Q&As. Perhaps these grass roots initiatives will fly a little higher. Let's see if we can help.

From time to time we will trawl through the forums and bring some calls for advice to your attention.

Two today, the first from BristolBachelor, who is looking for a cheap and reasonably reliable hosting firm, preferably in Europe. Any suggestions?

Second, an open-ended call from Joeman, who wants a new laptop.

My current Laptop (Asus M50) is getting a bit long in the tooth, so im looking for a replacement. Ideally would like the same screensize but higher resolution, i7 CPU, SSD. The closest i can find to this spec is a 15" MacBook Pro with HD screen and SSD options, but im not an Apple fan, so can anyone suggest an alternative??

Whatcha reckon?