Going travelling and will work abroad too, need ultraportable with good power. budget budget,...

Hi there, I'm new to this community and really hope you guys can help me here..

I'm going travelling in central and south america very soon and need to buy a good and light laptop as I will be working there too.

I am budget traveller (70 liters backpack and small daypack). I have travelled extensivly in Asia but I did not carry any laptop as I didnt really need one. This time is going to be different as I will be working there too (office and "on the field" job), not before having travelled few more months, sometimes sleeping in a tent, trekking high in the mountains and possibly hitchiking most of the time. Quite nervous about carrying a laptop with me, so I dont want to spend much and I havnt got much cash to spend on laptops anyway. 750$ is the limit, but around $500/550 is really what I am after.

I will need to run the normal Office bundle, internet browsers, maybe p2p software such as torrent and soulseek, and would like to be able to run, even if alone, with everything else turned off, a software with this system requirements:

MINIMUM system requirements:

• Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon™ XP
• 1024x768 resolution
• DirectX compatible soundcard
• 512MB RAM
• 50MB free on the hard drive

I know I might be asking too much, but I am a wishfull thinker :)

I have been checking many models in the last days and was quite impressed by the Acer Aspire new line, but was put off by some stats that show how easily Acer laptops brake down. I have owned a Toshiba which died after an extensive and intensive, and a quite unrespectful towards the machine, 4years usage. I have the feeling Toshiba and Asus would last longer.

Have seen a couple of nice HP laptops but heard that HP is even worse than Acer in terms of reliability. Mac is out of question, the only thing i do with apples is eat them.

ok so..could you pleae help me / point me towards something hard enough to resist some up and downs, small and light (12.5'', 1.5kg max) and with decent power (no atom processors)?

I'm based in Italy atm, if this can help, but not for long..

thank you. cheers. ciao!

thanks qhn for your reply..I have considered netbooks but they are not enough powerful for my likings..that's why I'm oriented towards an ultrabook with higher performances and still good portability.

I am attracted by the Asus U24E-XH71..the laptop seems exactly what i am after, although pricey, but quality needs to be paid I guess..

the HP DM1Z looks cool too and way cheaper but would love to avoid any kind of fixing at all as I will be often on the move, without an address for most of the time..I keep reading horror stories with regards to HP products..

was also considering the Toshiba Satellite T235D and Toshiba Satellite T235-S1350 which are a bit older, bigger, havier but cheaper and safe as.
Btw, given more or less the same performance on the paper, what's better between an AMD and an Intel CPU? This might be a silly question but I dunno much about computers really..

My attention is also triggered by the Acer Aspire TimelineX AS1830T, which seems powerful and cheap. I would have already bought if I wasnt very worried about the reliability..any thoughs or experiences on this?