Lookin for a College Laptop

If you want something with a good battery look for laptop that have ultrabays for CD/DVD-ROMs because you can fit a secondarry battery in it.
A friend of mine bought a thinkpad T23. The original battery last 3h but with the second ultrabay batt. gets an extra 3.5h. (a T30 might fit your search)
IBMs have a really good construction. My next one probably is gona be a t23 or a t30.
HDD, and RAM is always upgradebel.

Perhaps like a dell 700m?

Head to ibuypower.com check out their AMD based laptops...the Battalion 101 CL-Turbo looks perfect for you. AMD Turion 64, x700, less than $1300.

ASUS Z63A.

Alienware Sentia all the way, they start quite low, you can have all the options you want, plus its Aliewnare!!!!!!!

Dell Inspiron 6000? i have this one and i have a Dell Latitude D410 i think they 6000 is the best for watching movies and it cost me £499!! when today it is £599-699!!

Latitude D610 if you get it with a coupon

First off, I would not recommend an Ibuypower laptop for something that will be needed on a daily basis. Second that's way high end, why get a vid card that sucks up battery life if he doesn't need it?

I have a Dell 700m for college work (have a gaming desktop in my room) and I really like it - here are some highlights
1) Get the extended battery and you'll get at least 4 hours of battery life
2) 12", very small and light so I have plenty of room for books (I'm a small guy so it fits nicely in my lap)
3) Pentium M (part of the battery life factor) so the fans aren't always running
4) The screen is really, really nice (1280x800 resolution so you still get a lot of real estate for 12")

If you do get the 700m, just buy the RAM off newegg or someplace else because Dell rips you off.

Turion and Pentium-M laptops get about the same battery life and performance, so I wouldn't make that the deciding factor in your purchase.

edit: my only complaint is that with Dell, you can't buy the laptop without the OS so you can't take advantage of your college's cheap OS deals (check and see if you need XP Pro to connect to the school wireless like I do, XP home won't cut it). Still, the Dell coupon I used made up for it ($800 off). And if you want to get real picky, I don't like the style of the 700m, I prefer the MSI 1013's looks over it.

I have seen the 700m around campus and it's a nice laptop for taking notes.

then why did u ask so early because they usually come out with a lot of laptops within a year?

A lot of the Asus models are very portable with great battery life.

u're in London as well??

computer stuffs in the Uk is very expensive with that 17.5% VAT... its outrageous!!!

i think its still early for u to decide wat to buy especially with the new Intel Duo Cores coming out...

keep a look-out for new up-coming models.. if u get ur laptop too early, u'll regret...

I have a dell 700m and I love it. I really don't do any gaming or audio or video recording/editing. I use it for word processing, internet browsing, and email. It's really small light and portable, and with the 8cell battery, i get about 5 hours of battery time, and I also have the 2 cell that I carry around in my laptop case, so 7 hours of battery time is more than I could ever use in one day.

I highly recommend it. I got it with the 2.0ghz pentium m, 256mb ram + 1 gig ram from new egg for total of 1.28gb, 80gb hard drive, dvdrw, 4 cell battery, and the 8 cell battery, all for a total of about 1,400 with the -$750 coupon.

I have had absolutely zero problems. I just reformatted it as soon as I bought it, installed antivirus software, and i'm good.

I wouldn't have done it another way.

Asus

Asus Z63a all the way. Best screen for a 14" - WXGA color shine, beats out Sony. Excellent quality, completely configurable. Good price. Extra bay battery for longer life. 5 to 5.5 lbs - easily portable. Buy at: c9tech, proportable, geared2play, star tech.
I have sister computer W3V and it's awesome. You will not be disappointed.