Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
The Antec P183 was loads easier to build in than my original P180. Cables fit in the back panel, etc. I don't know how it compares to the Antec 300, but you might want to take a look if your original impression was with the P180. My top fan is still running in my original P180, so it might be your cat causing premature failure of the fan.
My cats liked to sit with their rumps on the top vent of my P180s. Being cats, it's not like I could do much to stop them from that. I had two of them but they're presently retired until I get around to repurposing them.
You're right that I never bothered with any of the newer revisions of the P180 due to the overwhelming idiocy of putting SO MUCH crap basically right at the bottom right corner of the motherboard. That one area always seems to look like Cthulhu having marital relations with a something from a Japanese cartoon no matter how neat I tried to make things.
I also saw the T500s have core i7's in them and I also wanted one. I can't justify it since my current system isn't very old.
I think it's the combination of the screen and the i7. The newer of my T-series Thinkpads does have a 2.8GHz CPU, so it's not like I'm going to get a big bump in horsepower, but the main battery and/or CPU improvements seems to allow about an hour of extra run time and these guys have probably the nicest screen I've seen on a notebook (which, granted, the previous generation Thinkpads also had).
The thinkpad doesn't have a DVI, but it at least has a DisplayPort. I've used it many times and it works fine.
What are you plugging it in to? I don't think I have anything that I could connect a displayport to.