Im about to start shopping around for a laptop, primarily for work use and mobile internet but I would like to be able to play the odd game. I havent set a budget yet but Im completely new to laptops so havent got a clue where to start.... my main thing is battery life (I want to be able to purchase a couple of spares to swap out on long trips, can you get bulk chargers that charge more than one at a time as well?) and Im also quite interested in it being lightweight and portable so I like the idea of something like the Vaio where the optical drives are all external... Do any other manufacturers do this?

I think the most hungry thing Id be running would be Photoshop to be completely honest.

Macbooks arent an option, it has to be a PC Im afraid. Oh, and Im trying to only buy from decent manufacturers who support their warranties as I dont want to get stuck with a lemon and useless tech support people.

So what experiences have you had with laptops in the past, and what can you recommend? Any advice you could offer would be most appreciated chaps and chapesses.

The little 3G fuji ones are pretty sweet.

http://www.fujitsu-siemens.co.uk/products/mobile/notebooks/lifebook_p.html

Im liking my current Dell XPS 1530 with T9500 CPU, 4GB, 320GB HDD and BluRay slot load drive

I had a slightly lower specd one until a few weeks ago and it was great too.

Plays games no problem.

From what I remember when mine turned up, Toshiba Sattelites are surprisingly swift...my dad spends hours on the bloody thing editing dvds, its got more grunt than his pc.

HP G6000 series arent bad.  Ive got one, and so do a few of my mates.  My mother also bought one without any prompting!  

AMD Dual Core chips, but youll get a Dual Core + 2Gb of RAM for Celeron Money.  

One thing about HPs, their usb sockets are pretty fragile.  My mates company uses them for their engineer laptops.  HP refuse to cover them under warranty dispite a disproportionate number of them breaking.  I believe the plastic beneath the usb pins just comes out rendering the socket unusable :-/

Ive only ever used/had one laptop, which was a Dell inspiron 8600 I think. It was a widescreen affair. I cant really fault it tbh, the only reason I moved back to a PC was it no longer could run the games I wanted to play etc, and I was fed up of cooking my nads.

The only help I can offer is in suggesting not getting a widescreen laptop (Which can be tough as they all seem to be nowadays!). The widescreen adds to size and weight, and (correct me if Im wrong) but the extra resolution makes it "weird"/tough playing new games. IE, the inspiron I had ran at 1600x1280 res or something on the screen. Anything less than that native res looked out of proportion etc, but even mediocre games struggled too.

Also I guess a bigger screen = bigger drain on battery. For a performance laptop battery life isnt that great it seems.

Other suggestions/tips would be if you know anyone in the channel islands etc, get them to buy the laptop tax free and bring it over when they next visit the mainland. Its quite a considerable saving (Like £300 on a £1300 laptop or something)

Im using an IBM Thinkpad T61 atm from work.... fully specced with vista, 4gb ram, dual core, etc etc so good performance....... but looks like sh*t....

Surely sh*t looks is an almost good feature in a laptop if its to be used out and about, less likely of some chav deciding its nickable.

Tbh if I had a top spec laptop, id actually almost be tempted to try to camouflage it as a sh*t laptop just to fool people...

tbh if you pick one of the top brands you cant really go wrong.