Hi all,

I'm looking for some advice on purchasing a laptop between £400 and £600.

Since September 2007 I've owned a Dell Inspiron 6400. A while back I upgraded it to have 2GB of DDR2 and have since upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate. It's time for a replacement, but I have been impressed with the Dell and would prefer to stick with the brand provided I can get a good deal.

I have been reading up on the top 5 sub-£600 laptops in PC Advisor but still feel a little lost. I'm looking for suggestions on suitable laptops based on the following:

USAGE: I use the laptop for day to day use and downloading, it is left on at almost all times right by my bed. I don't do any gaming. Weight is not a huge concern.

STORAGE: I use external drives for storage and can manage with anything upwards of 110GB.

I would prefer to have a small SSD than large HDD, due to the laptop being left on for long periods of time.

PROCESSOR: This is more important than the memory to me, as it's not easily upgraded. I would imagine something like the Intel Core i3 or i5 would be fine.

MEMORY: I would like to end up with no less than 4GB of DDR3, but would consider upgrading the RAM provided there was a spare slot.

BATTERY LIFE: I don't use the laptop much outside the house but reasonable battery life of around 3 hours would be good.

GRAPHICS & SOUND: Due to not gaming, I can manage with onboard graphics. I sometimes use the laptop for playing music and would be put of by the likes of the Acer Aspire 5742-374G32Mnkk with its mono speaker.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Mike