Does anyone know what kind of spec you need on a laptop to be able to run Vista without ripping your hair out? My wife decided a few years ago she needed a laptop and apparently REALLY needs one now despite being a stay at home mom in a house with 2 computers in the rooms she uses most. The most important requirement is that it be pink but I can already hear the complaints about it being slow and how she hates it so I've taken her bog standard Inspiron 1525 and added a couple of Gigs of Ram to it.

Now I have absolutely no idea what she wants it for as I've asked her hundreds of times why I should spend money on a laptop for her when our computers are always on but it seems she can't face the idea of not being able to check MySpace 24/7 and as such she's taken control of my PDA so she can constantly browse the web on it. Still I refuse to buy a beefy laptop if it won't be used for anything more than that so came up with the following spec.

SYSTEM COLOR Flamingo Pink
PROCESSOR Intel® Celeron® 550 (2.0GHz, 533Mhz, 1M L2 Cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic Edition SP1
HD DISPLAY Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280x800)
MEMORY 3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
HARD DRIVE Size: 120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
VIDEO CARD Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE CD Writer / DVD player (Combo Drive)
WIRELESS NETWORK CARDS Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Mini-Card
INTEGRATED WEBCAM No Webcam Option
BATTERY OPTIONS 4 cell battery
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0

My question is will that be enough to browse the web, have 3 or so messengers running and maybe cope with a basic editing picture package? I'm most concerned about the CPU as I just don't like Celerons but it's what she chose so if it does the job I might just cave in. If on the other hand it's a steaming pile of poo I won't as I'll be damned if I'm buying her a powerful laptop and not having one myself

The Celerons arent that bad a chip really and looking at that spec it should run what you want on it. Wont be a power gaming machine but then youre not buying it for that.

Fuckshitpiss now I'm getting one too. I'll never be able to afford a new car at this rate.

Centrino and Vista doesn't really go together though. The low L2 cache will cause lots of CPU lag because it can't keep as much data ready as a proper Core 2 Duo.

WTF do you want with a pink laptop as well?

It would go with my Barbies of course.

Youd be better of running XP on it tbh ..

Although vista would run its not gonna be outstanding

I upgraded it to a Core 2 duo, same as I put in mine. I'm now 2 grand poorer \o/