either way, it's not like he's going to understand that now is he? what i was trying to establish was that there is a difference between core duo and core 2 duo, and that core 2 duo is better.

I'm pretty sure you can get a better laptop for that price!
Scout around a little, and take note of the speed pf the RAM and GPU, as the laptop versions from most manufacturers may be gimped down a little (around 500MHz clock speed for GPU and preferrably around 800MHz for the RAM)!
The CPU will do fine in any case, the Core 2 Duo is a good allround processor.

That's complete rubbish. Core itself is an architecture completely seperate from Pentium 4, based on Pentium III.

Core Duo is the predecessor of Core 2 Duo.  You want Core 2 Duo; it's 1.5-2x faster at the same speed.

If it's a Core 2 Duo, the CPU is fine; you won't notice much of an improvement by spending more. If it's a Core Duo, look elsewhere.

The RAM is fine, unless you are planning to run Vista in which case you might want more if you are going to use memory-intensive applications such as Photoshop.

The HDD doesn't affect performance.

The graphics card is sort of OK: it's much better than integrated and better than all the cheap Nvidia ones 8200-8500. Is it a "Radeon" or a "Mobility Radeon"? You want Mobility; if it doesn't say that then it's a desktop card and will drain all your battery power. If you're planning to run the latest games on high quality, you would want a better graphics card like the Mobility Radeon 36xx or higher series.

The price looks high, but as Australia tends to be as much as a rip-off as the UK it's probably the best you'll get.

I saw a better deal at office depot:

3GB Ram and 160 GB Harddrive for 500 i think (AMD)
Oh yes. At best Buy:
250Gb harddrive and 4 gb ram for like 800
intell core duo

GPU Shader count is much more important than core clock. Some lesser GPUs have higher frequencies than the top of the range.

The current market is such that you want a Mobility Radeon 2600 or 2700; or a Mobility Radeon 3650 or 3800 or 3800X2; or a Geforce 8600M, 8700M, 8800M; or a Geforce 9600M, 9700M or 9800M.Anything less is not for serious gaming.

The AMD ones tend to give better value as they are on a smaller process node which means less power consumption:

Currently: Mobilty Radeon 2xxx (65nm) vs. Geforce 8xxxM (90nm) - AMD uses less power.

Becoming availible now or soon: Mobilty Radeon 3xxx (55nm) vs. Geforce 9xxxM (65nm) - AMD uses less power.

i know where the architecture is derived from!! but am i going to confuse him by telling him that nonsense when he has no idea they were different in the first place? you don't have to be so technically accurate all the time.

HARD DISK DRIVE SIZE IS NOT IMPORTANT!!

RAM is not really important 2GB or more.

Core Duo sucks compared to Turion or Core 2 Duo.

And you haven't listed the graphics: it's probably sucky Intel integrated.

And finally, the OP lives in Australia.

"What do you want me to do?  LEAVE?  Then they'll keep being wrong!"

???

make sense please.

actually, forget it.

 It's a comic which explains why I'm so techically accurate all the time.