The advice we were given by an IT guy , was to stay away from celeron processors . We bought an athlon processor afterwards .He told us that that core-2-duo or dual core are the best processors )
Were also advised to buy either Sony , HP, Toshiba , or Compaq . Bought a Compaq .
Course times have changed a lot since last January , and there is now windows 7 to consider . Vista / Xp seem to be history .
And Microsoft Office 2007 seems to be the way forward .( not very user-friendly though )
We bought in pc world , and had no problems .
You will be offered many extra's when purchasing so only choose what you really need .
Our salesman wanted to sell us the following as extra at discounted prices , which we declined .
1. Anti-virus ( download avg for free )
2. MS Office 07 ( uploaded our own version of MS 03 instead )
3. Surge protector ( not really necessary for a laptop )
4. Carrier Bag € 40 - ( bought one in Tesco for € 10 )
Dont be fooled by hdmi and blue ray - your son should be able to live without them