oh and manuel, these days, unless you are, a power user, a HD video streamer, running a server, or a gamer, you don't need a desktop, laptops are becoming a much better choice , especially now that the AMD Fusion is out, the new laptops also have HDMI output and everything so yo can always connect it to a bigger screen if you want, it's just a smarter buy these days since they are also very portable. I'm literally going to retire my XP3200 and x2 4400 in the next year or 2 from the Everybody Machine/HTPC purposes that they are for now and replace them with my current laptop machines that draw less power and can handle all the HD videos I have on my server after I get my hands on the Deccan Krishna Fusion laptop hehehehehehemuwahahahahaha!

Yes, a laptop would do fine, but he needs/wants a big screen (24''-27'') to make working with several documents side by side easier.

Isn't the laptop screen in the way when you connect it to a bigger screen?

Another thing is he had 2 laptops (brand products) break on him before so he kinda lost faith in them or so he says. :P

Really? o.0

Even my friends laptop is about 3 years old but it is very high end, it even has a fingerprint scanner to log on, and even that chokes on Youtube 720p.

I guess it's just Youtube?

A desktop would be a much better choice unless he wants something portable of course. You can connect a laptop to a bigger screen, and just use an external mouse and keyboard though, and move the laptop out of the way.

As for original question, yes integrated graphics are fine. Hell my friend bought a $300 laptop from bestbuy with radeon 4250 integrated graphics and he can play oblivion fine on medium. As long as he gets a computer with a modern processor, it should easily be able to handle 1080p video playback, as long as he buys a screen that can handle it as well.

Maybe. I only ever tried playing stuff with x264 on Media Player Classic, never HD streaming.

If you go with onboard graphics only, there really is no discussion.

A8-3850 4 cores, 2.9 GHz, Radeon HD 6550D (127%)
A6-3650 4 cores, 2.6 GHz, Radeon HD 6530D (100%)
Core i3-2105 2 cores + HT, 3.1 GHz, HD Graphics 3000 (57%)
Pentium G620 2 cores, 2.6 GHz, HD Graphics 2000 (38%)

The AMD chips beat the crap out of the Intel chips when it comes to graphics.

I'm guessing SD x264 would mainly strain the processor because of the decompression etc.

HD x264 would strain the graphics card / chip as well, that was the weakness of my computer before I installed a separate graphics card.

I wonder what Youtube does which strains the graphics card / chip even further?

My 3 year old laptop (Core 2 Duo 2.10GHz, 2GB RAM) plays youtube 720p content without problems.

Does that have a discrete card?

I don't know...

I just checked the product page on the net an it says it has an onboard Intel GMA X3100 with max. 358MB memory.