This may also sound a bit odd, but I like the looks of the Ultranote II, it looks minimal, and I love minimal themes and appearances.
That's actually pretty awesome. We had an electronics store chain here a while ago (actually we have it again after it went bankrupt) that was specialized in PCs/laptops, PC parts/accessories and custom-built PCs (althoough they weren't really good) but they had ridiculous prices for their custom-built PCs and laptops (played around with their editor and - depending on the selected parts - the difference in price (one of their custom-built PCs vs. buying the parts myself somewhere else and assembling it myself) was up to 400€.
Building your own laptop (buying the parts yourself) isn't really a thing. A nice idea, but not practical (expensive, hard to get parts, etc.). Buying a custom-built laptop from a shop on the other hand is cool, when the prices aren't too high.
I know, I totally agree with you, PC Specialist seems to be the best bet, they're actually really reasonable with the prices, it really wouldn't be that much cheaper to buy the PC's and build them yourself, and apparently, they have outstanding customer satisfaction.