12.1" Laptop

[JonJ678]

Damn it man, what do you actually want this machine to do? So far I've got

12" screen
Run photoshop on an external monitor
Not run games
Reliable
£700

What do you want to do with photoshop? Anything gentle an atom will cope with, if you're patient. Anything intense, you want a desktop for really. Given you're writing off processors based solely on ghz, I'm going to hazard a guess that you just don't know.

Samsung N510, with an ssd. It will be quick, reliable, well under £700, has the screen size you want. It uses an atom processor, at 1.6ghz. So don't expect it to run cad software, encode video swiftly, or do mad things with photoshop. However for all 'general use' tasks it'll excel, even if she wants to play the sims on it.

Laptops are as reliable as the user. I've seen many, many broken dell inspiron 1525s, but they're owned by students because they were cheap and have had beer poured on them. Very few macs, because mac owners seem to revere the hardware so treat it well. If she's going to drop it down the stairs, get an ssd and a good warranty.

 

[Raikiri]

1.3 Dual core might be fine. Any examples?

Acer Timeline 3810T?

* Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 1.4 GHz Dual-Core
* RAM - 4 GB (installed) 8 GB (max) - DDR3 SDRAM
* Hard Drive - 320 GB
* Operating System - Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
- Windows 7 Upgrade
* Screen - 13.3 in TFT active matrix 1366 x 768 24-bit (16.7 million colours)
* Optical Drive - None
* Graphics - Intel GMA 4500MHD
* Bluetooth - Yes
* Notebook Camera - Integrated - 0.3 Megapixel
* Warranty - 1 year warranty

£600-650, very slim with an 8-9 hour battery life.

 

[DoubleCheese]

Samsung X360?

 

[raptormonkey]

Acer Timeline 3810T?

* Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 1.4 GHz Dual-Core
* RAM - 4 GB (installed) 8 GB (max) - DDR3 SDRAM
* Hard Drive - 320 GB
* Operating System - Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
- Windows 7 Upgrade
* Screen - 13.3 in TFT active matrix 1366 x 768 24-bit (16.7 million colours)
* Optical Drive - None
* Graphics - Intel GMA 4500MHD
* Bluetooth - Yes
* Notebook Camera - Integrated - 0.3 Megapixel
* Warranty - 1 year warranty

£600-650, very slim with an 8-9 hour battery life.

That looks good too. I will pass the info on. Cheers

 

[Moeks]

The Acer Timeline series gets a very big thumbs up from me, they are some of the most complete laptops ever made in my opinion. They are powerful enough for most things most people use laptops for, they have fantastic battery lives, they are well made, light weight, slim, they look functional rather than chintzy ...I think they are great. You can even get them with a half decent ATI discrete graphics chip in if you wish to play some relatively basic games on it too.