The hunt continues and what I'm after changes daily. I've dropped the idea of a Dell Inspiron as then seem to be big heavy plasticy and not 'elegant'. I'm mainly looking at a Sony. The choice is between the K series which is a bit big but well made, the extended warranty is £175 for 2 extra years, and it comes with a really good software bundle, such as Adobe Premier! I much prefer the Sony A series as it is lighter, looks better made and I 'just like it more'. I would be more proud to own one!! However it is more money and has a Centrino cpu which apparently is a lot lot slower than P4 when it comes to big processing tasks. General stuff in XP it seemed quicker and nicer to use.
Toshiba is another choice as the extended warranty is only £100 for an extra 2 years. I've not found 'the right one' yet, and then I'd be missing out on the Sony software bundle. I do actually need 1/2 of the Sony bundled software.
What I have leant is what an absolute rip off the PCWorld extended warranty packages are!!!