laptops
Dell, Evesham Micro, Aldi ( Gericom ) all are made by Compal in Japan, Fujitsu Siemens are also made by the same company but much more expensive and the same machine. many laptops are generic badged machines, Acer make a lot but the best ones are the Compal ones, they only make for third parties and do not market on their own.
The Gericom ones that are sold by Aldi are among the best laptops on the market, well specified and good backup, what you are looking for is more or less the basic configuration these days and can be had for £899 or less.
A Centrino or AMD mobile processor with speedstep technology will give 3 hours or more of battery life, this bit of wizardry monitors the CPU load and only runs it at a speed needed for the task so a 1.6Ghz will run at 1.6 when needed but will slow to 600mhz or anything in between when running appz that don't need the speed and therefore uses less power creating less heat.
If I had the chice then the AMD cpu would be my choice but the Intel Centrino is fine, just more expensive.
HTH
