I used xp with 384mb ram for 6months b4 i got my 2k licence and it ran fine. i even played gta3, ut2k and crazy taxi on it.

Let me start by apologizing because I am sure you guys know more about laptops than I do.

Having said that, Bombatwist, why don't you take a look at http://gnode.com for a good deal on laptops. We are trying to get together 10,000 (yes, 10,000!!!) people who need a laptop so that we can negotiate a fantastic deal with one of the major manufacturers for them.

http://www.intel.com/design/graphics/gma900/

this is about that intel vid card, 128mb ram and its 256bit, thats not bad for a laptop.

and 512mb of ram is what it recommended by MS to have but if you talk to almost any harware nut he will tell you to get a gig for many reasing, mostly dual channel