Laptop virgin - help in buying a new laptop needed.

[bill999]

I am new to Laptops so help would be much appreciated.

I am about to buy a new laptop as I occasionally have to take it to work, but not often so weight is no problem. At present I have an old PC (5 years old) with AMD 1.7gHz so probably anything I buy will seem exceptionally faster than at present.

My dilema is do I buy

2.0GHz Intel Pentium-M Processor or AMD Athlon 64 3400

The specs I am looking at are 1024MB Ram, 100GB HD, Radeon 9700 graphics.

My main use of the PC will be Internet, MS Office, Corel Draw, Corel Photopaint and occasional games such as Doom 3 (not the latest games).

Battery life is not too important as the battery will almost always be on charge.

Which one should I buy? Is there anything I should be thinking about before buying? Is heat a problem for the AMD? Is integrated graphics a no-no? As I do not play games very often would this be a problem? Radeon 9700 graphics card is this OK?

I have seen several I might consider at www.novatech.co.uk

Help much appreciated as I am no PC expert

[glc]

If I were looking at those specs, I'd get a Dell Inspiron 9300 with the GeForce Go 6800 option. The ATI X300 standard video isn't too bad but new games may choke it. Up to you whether it's worth 250 quid to upgrade the video.

If it weren't for games, you could buy a considerably cheaper laptop that would do a fine job - and a 100gb hard drive is also an expensive upgrade, do you really need that much storage?

[Jaggannath]

I have what glc has recommended above, with an 80 GB HDD and it will readily do everything you're asking of it bill... the 6800 Go is definitely worth it for gaming