In fact even these companies often don't really make the laptops either. Most of their manufacturing, called "factory work", is done in China. Taiwan is increasingly becoming only a design center. For example, Inventec, a latecomer to China just set up a big factory in Shanghai earlier this year.

So why pay an extra $500 to have Dell/HP/IBM emblazoned on your laptop? Well, until recently it was because laptops were hard to configure, had odd peripheral requirements and needed support. All of that is changing however. A lot of companies won't even provide much support anymore and the other items have all undergone standardization. White box laptops are becoming more popular especially among companies that have a technical staff to install the OS and provide in-house support. Makers are responding to this new demand and many direct sales outlets now offer OEM direct laptops. Here are a few:

Top Micro
Str8buy
Atic
AVA Direct

Sharp power users can also get even better deals including grey market access using resources like Price Watch.

The impact that this is having on the brand names is that they are having to cut prices. Dell has slashed prices repeatedly this fall. For the big brands this means cutting into one of their historically most lucrative areas of business. The changes are especially hurting IBM because the Thinkpad line is aging and big blue's wide margins are especially vulnerable to price competition.