Which laptop would you get out of these?

That's rubbish, I worked for years in a big electrical store in ireland, ***... manager. toshiba is one of the most reliable on the market. if you can try to buy it with an operating system of WINDOWS XP, not VISTA, you are entitled to a down grade, by law, as vista has many problems, Microsoft will issue you with xp home edition, just give them the code that you got with the computer. there are many makes, talk to a few shops first and, when you want to buy tell the sales person to go away and read the spec, then decide which one you want, or simple bring a friend who knows about computers