Choosing my friends graduation present--Help!

[ZeratulsAvenger]

I am in my Senior year of High school and, as with the time coming, some parents are thinking about graduation presents. My friends mother asked me just the other day on what I would recommend for a computer for college that would be given as a grad. present. I don't know what to tell her.

So many variables, so I guess here I go on my questions:
--Keep in mind that this is supposed to be a college computer, for papers and whatever else a college student might need. If Office doesn't come Pre-Installed(such as with the Sager Notebooks), then I will likely recommend OpenOffice until he gets to college. Most colleges have discounted software, right?

1) He is a light gamer. He thinks HL:2 is awesome, but I don't know what settings he really would want to make it playable, so I am unsure of what graphics card might be required for his uses. I would say nothing extravagant, but then again I don't know what games really take. I chug along on my Ti4200 just fine, but I know for a hardcore gamer the card is laughably old. Since I doubt he will be doing much gaming, what's a good middle range card?

2) I am unsure if I should recommend a larger or medium screen computer. I am thinking 15”/15.4”, since 17” seems a little large. With the 15” he could still bring it to class(if he so chooses, although I know a lot of people end up not even bothering.)

3) Obviously a Centrino laptop, or at least one with a mobile processor(no P4's or Athlon 64's). Would ~1.8GHz work, or should it be on of the 2+ GHz chips?

4) Should I bother with a 7200rpm Hard drive, or is the 5400rpm HD fast enough for everything excluding more intense work? He will be doing no video/image editing.

5) 512MB or 1GB of RAM?

6) Who's a reputable dealer that would fit all of the above specifications without spending every dime of my Friends Parents money? I know of Sager, Dell, HP, Compaq, Sony, etc. I was thinking of sticking with Sager or Dell.

I would have said “Get a Mac”, but he would kill me if I convinced his parents to do that. Shucks

Thanks for the help.

[glc]

What's the price range? Something like a Dell Inspiron 6000 can be customized to do just about anything you want to do.

[ZeratulsAvenger]

They didn't specify a price range, so I was just thinking I would give them a minimalistic and then a recommended setup.

[thefultonhow]

If he does want to game, my personal favorite 15.4" laptop is the Sager NP5320. I have heard good things about vendors like PowerNotebooks or PCTorque, but most of the people that sell these things provide good service. A good configuration for the NP5320 is around the $1500-1700 range, though, so it's not cheap.

If your friend isn't a really serious gamer, the Inspiron 6000 with the ATI X300 graphics should suffice. It's also a lot cheaper.

[sdkfz]

I'd have a look at the school's web site, they may have some requirement that the PC must have - like the Pro Version of Win XP.