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.
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.
