I am ordering a new laptop this week, have about 1k plus VAT to spend...

Needs to be light, no more than around 1.5kg as I don't want to lug a brick around, have reasonable battery life (2 hours min) DVD/RW, blue tooth, Wireless, etc

Not worried about a big screen so 12.1" is fine. Currently looking at the following:

Clicky

Any advice would be greatfully received

Cheers

pop along to www.dell.co.uk and keep an eye out on there deals

they always seem to be the best sadly enough

have a look on http://uk.insight.com/apps/nbs/index.php?C=102&S=1015 not necessarily the cheapest but on there you can sort and select by various criteria eg weight, processor, battery life, HDD, memory to see what is available. They do most brands eg Siemens, HP, Sony, Apple, Acer, IBM etc etc

I like this one

and it's under a grand!

IMHO IBM is the way to go - they keep working for years and years and are great quality . (I've used: siemens, Dell, Toshiba, Pacer, IBM, ...)

Other makes are cheaper and at first sight seem to offer 'more for the money' but in durability and out and out performance they are hard to beat.

Cheers

HP models for me as they seem to be the only people doing a button that lets you turn the touch pad off when you are typing - saves accidentally moving the cursor etc.

How do you want to use it? Most laptops are ergonimical disasters for longer term use. If the keyboard is in the right position the screen isnt and vice versa. Really gives you cramps for long term use.

Mine is used mainly in the office with occassional forays out for several days. Therefore I use a seperate 21" screen and wireless mouse and keyboard when in the office. I also have network plugged in plus printer plus Ipaq dock plus card reader. I found it was a right pain to plug and unplug all that from my last laptop when I wanted to go out. In fact in the end the sockets (especially video and parallel) started falling to pieces after a while.

So when I bought my last one I went for one with a docking station - best decision I made. I ended up with a Compaq business machine - build quality is brilliant and am very happy with it. I understand the IBMs and Toshiba business machines are also very good and you can buy a docking station for most of them