Ok I know that this is a lame cop out but............

I have given up on the upgrade of my father in laws laptop with no use and sold it on Ebay for £385, as he was prepared to spend another £175-200 on a 700nhz 12 gig machine that needed an external modem and a cd writer to do what he needed, pics on xp (it was tied to 98se ) therefore our reasonable budget is £385 cash + 200 (cd burner, memory ext modem) (plus drawbacks of old usb1 and no firewire etc,
BTW shipping to Jersey so free of VAT but some freight usually

I think A toshiba Sat pro A10 from dabs @ £588 looks good unfortunately I have been looking at 3 magasines and working online for 5 hours and am now not able to stand back and make an unbiast decision, As its not my money,

$.01 for your thoughts , pretty much a UK thing though

thanks:grinthumb