My wife will be the main user and she's disabled so it has to be light - no more than 2.5kilos, and preferably less. I'm aware that light = pricey, but our budget doesn't extend to the top end of the price scale, no more than £700.
We would like to be able to check out the machines in-store before buying, as it's amazing how machines of the same weight feel as though they're different! So any recommendation must be available on the highstreet (the usual stores plus one other rival that has a branch locally.)
It's going to be used for surfing the net, emails, and lots of video chatting on MSN, so it'll need excellent battery life. It will also be used for watching DVDs, and I want to be able to burn DVDs directly. So it must have a DVDRW and a reasonably good screen.
It'll be used literally as a lap-top, so it needs to be something that runs quite cool.
Although our house is fully wired-LAN'd up, it will also need wireless for when it's used in the garden, preferably built in, but I have got a USB wireless adapter anyway.
Also, if it's shared graphics memory I want it to have at least 768Mb so after the share it's still got 512Mb for XP, cause my mates laptop with 512Mb runs like a pig once the graphics card's taken its 128Mb. I wouldn't mind the ability to play games on it like Doom3/Quake4, but I also know that's out of my price bracket too! But the best graphics card for the price please!
Would prefer if it had a 7200rpm HDD instead of 5200/5400prm, but I know that's probably out of the question as well!
Not fussed whether it's AMD or Intel....
So what would you guys recommend?
Cheers.
We would like to be able to check out the machines in-store before buying, as it's amazing how machines of the same weight feel as though they're different! So any recommendation must be available on the highstreet (the usual stores plus one other rival that has a branch locally.)
It's going to be used for surfing the net, emails, and lots of video chatting on MSN, so it'll need excellent battery life. It will also be used for watching DVDs, and I want to be able to burn DVDs directly. So it must have a DVDRW and a reasonably good screen.
It'll be used literally as a lap-top, so it needs to be something that runs quite cool.
Although our house is fully wired-LAN'd up, it will also need wireless for when it's used in the garden, preferably built in, but I have got a USB wireless adapter anyway.
Also, if it's shared graphics memory I want it to have at least 768Mb so after the share it's still got 512Mb for XP, cause my mates laptop with 512Mb runs like a pig once the graphics card's taken its 128Mb. I wouldn't mind the ability to play games on it like Doom3/Quake4, but I also know that's out of my price bracket too! But the best graphics card for the price please!
Would prefer if it had a 7200rpm HDD instead of 5200/5400prm, but I know that's probably out of the question as well!
Not fussed whether it's AMD or Intel....
So what would you guys recommend?
Cheers.
