[Gllug] [OT] Giving advice on buying a laptop

[Rev Simon Rumble]

I work in computers so, of course, I'm an expert on everything.  A
friend of mine has asked me to help her buy a laptop.  Of course, I've
never bought a laptop: mine was given to me with a broken screen cable
(tenner on eBay for one with a broken screen but intact cable solved
that).

I ask for her requirements, and they're suitably vague.  Of course.  And
I know that if it all goes pear-shaped, it'll all be my fault.  I
suggested a Mac, because then it'll Just Work <tm>, but that didn't go
down well.  I suggested a desktop, because laptops are 3X the price for
the same power, but she wants to move it around.

If it were for me, I'd jump on eBay and buy the cheapest that could run
X and Firefox, but I'm sure she'll want to play DVDs and the like. 
But I can fix any problems myself, and I'm willing to take the risks
involved in eBay.

So any suggestions?  Morgans seem to have some rather reasonably priced
ones.  I'm almost tempted to say PC World, simply because of their
returns/replacement policy.

PS: I doubt I can convince her to run Linux on it.  <sigh>  I will,
however, stress that I won't be doing any OS-level support if she's
running Windows, beyond recommending crapware-removal software and not
using IE.
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