New Laptop

[kirennia]

Okay, so basically, this has been an investment long overdue so I decided to go to the bank today and get a £500 extension on my student overdraft to afford a laptop. I'm doing a programming degree so it's quite needed at the moment...

So I'm looking for a recommendation of where to go to get one. My price limit is around £400 and I need the following:

Very minimum 1gb ram
Large battery life, the longer the better
No OS! Don't want vista, dont want XP, I'll sort out xubuntu myself to double my battery life and have a much better system!

That's about it. 80gb HD will do, I've got my desktop for storage; graphics card just needs to be integrated, processor doesn't need to be hugely fast.

It's a pretty small 'I need' list, just need it for coding on really and my demands in that department wont be too high until the very end of my project when I'll be using my desktop anyway for 3d rendering.

Have found an acer laptop (5720) but it says nothing about the battery life and vista is a requirement...other then that it seemed ideal

 

[Binky the Bomb]

Ok, here's an idea.
A refurbished Toshiba Satellite A200 series would fit the bill, its got thr right (ish) specs your lookig for, although screen size is upto what you can find (17" widescreens the max you can get I think).

Satellite Pro A200-22P Thats the website with the info on abrand new, to give you an idea on what I mean. If thats what your looking for in a benchmark, then you can use that on google to find any refurbishment companies (they do exist).

 

[Vasconcelos]

Is it for gaming?? If so, i recommend you nothing with less than an 8600GT Mobile and 2GB RAM. Processor isnt that important (anything decent)

If not for gaming, 2GB RAM and Intel Mobile processors are your best friends. And if you can save some bucks for a 17" monitor your eye's health will thank you

Personally, for laptops i like Dell's portfolio. Decent quality, good 1 year Dell warranty, and some nice configs avaible for 600€ (~400pounds).