Preparing for a Canadian Invasion

So I'm sitting here waiting for five hairy jet-lagged Canadians to fall through my front door. Yes it's that time of year again. Tanglefoot is on tour from 1st May to 8th June. the beds are made up, there's an enormous pan of sausage soup (their favourite) simmering gently on the stove and the house is waiting for the patter of less than tiny feet. This year they have a new piano player, Robert Graham. This is last year's lineup:
Tanglefoot (Canada)
Back Row: Terry Young, Brian Weirmier (outgoing pianist)
Front Row: Al Parrish, Sandra Swannell, Steve Ritchie.
I predict five weeks of hilarity, good music, lots of hugs and a sudden upsurge in the sale of English sausages.

Preparing for a Canadian Invasion

So I'm sitting here waiting for five hairy jet-lagged Canadians to fall through my front door. Yes it's that time of year again. Tanglefoot is on tour from 1st May to 8th June. the beds are made up, there's an enormous pan of sausage soup (their favourite) simmering gently on the stove and the house is waiting for the patter of less than tiny feet. This year they have a new piano player, Robert Graham. This is last year's lineup:
Tanglefoot (Canada)
Back Row: Terry Young, Brian Weirmier (outgoing pianist)
Front Row: Al Parrish, Sandra Swannell, Steve Ritchie.
I predict five weeks of hilarity, good music, lots of hugs and a sudden upsurge in the sale of English sausages.

Laptop

So I'm thinking of getting a laptop to replace my cranky old desktop PC and I'm looking at Dell, possibly their Vostro range with a dual core processor. I need it to be able to work 16 hours a day without getting tired and I'd like it to drive an extra screen and to have a keyboard port (I'm hard on keyboards, wear the letters off the keys). Wi-Fi and networking as standard, of course and decent graphics - not for gaming, but for Photoshop and design-for-print.

I'm not looking at spending more than 400 ish ex-VAT and I'm certainly not looking to convert to a MAC (before anyone starts).

I'll be ordering it with the old Windows operating system, not Vista.

Though I do want the machine to be portable (for things like heading off to Milford) I'll mostly be using this in the office, so unlike the last laptop  bought, lightweight portability is not the main issue.

Does anyone have experience of a similar machine? Any advice?

Laptop

So I'm thinking of getting a laptop to replace my cranky old desktop PC and I'm looking at Dell, possibly their Vostro range with a dual core processor. I need it to be able to work 16 hours a day without getting tired and I'd like it to drive an extra screen and to have a keyboard port (I'm hard on keyboards, wear the letters off the keys). Wi-Fi and networking as standard, of course and decent graphics - not for gaming, but for Photoshop and design-for-print.

I'm not looking at spending more than 400 ish ex-VAT and I'm certainly not looking to convert to a MAC (before anyone starts).

I'll be ordering it with the old Windows operating system, not Vista.

Though I do want the machine to be portable (for things like heading off to Milford) I'll mostly be using this in the office, so unlike the last laptop  bought, lightweight portability is not the main issue.

Does anyone have experience of a similar machine? Any advice?