hello all

If anyone has time for advice, I'd be grateful. I think I will soon be replacing a 4 year old Samsung NC10 which I have loved but is not economical to keep repairing (screen / fan issues). I might even order this weekend so anyone who has speedy advice would be most appreciated.

I need the following things:

• Portability. I am used to the NC10 weight of 1.2kgs, I travel a lot and I don't want to lug around some great 16 inch screen. I am thinking screen between 11 and 14 inches. I also want to be able to walk the 2.5 miles to uni each day with it.
• Something relatively durable, due to the travel.
• A reasonable amount of storage space. I keep minimum 60GB of stuff on my C drive currently
• Better RAM than I have now (not hard!)
• Ability to do a few things at once (i.e. write essay, research something, watch movie etc.
• Ethernet port
• Abliity to plug in my external hard drives (USB 2.0) to play movies / backup etc
• Comfortable keyboard for writing dissertation

Stuff I don't need: - Optical drive - Ability to do any kind of gaming / fancy graphics (nothing beyond watching a movie is even slightly necessary) - Massive shiny screen

In an ideal world, I'd maybe like a macbook air, but I can't afford it and am unconvinced I would want to switch to mac anyway. Probably a better option for me would be the Samsung 9 Series but again too expensive and possibly too fancy.

So I have come to the conclusion I need an ultrabook, but not one of the super fancy ones. My budget is max £700, preferably less.

So far I am looking at these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Seri...1349763&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-SVT1311...1349785&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-Zenbook...1349820&sr=1-1

Any thoughts or advice on these ones please? Are there other similar ones I am missing for a decent price??

I would also wonder whether getting windows 8 would be a good idea at this moment? I am still on XP!

Thanks very much in advance