Looking for a laptop that's gonna be lugged around a lot but needs to run fast enough with a big HDD to work with Photoshop and lots of large image files and run Publisher too as well as other Office apps.

Ideally 4Gb RAM and 250Gb+ HDD and thinner and lighter than your average boxes. Screen size could be as small as 12-13" but 15" preferred.

Been looking at Lenovo and Asus models and Samsung too.

Any ideas from the STW geek community?

Argos clearance bargains.

my brother bought an acer Timeline laptop. Slimmer than normal, very nicely made and lasts 6-8hrs on the battery. Never less than 4+ hours. You might want something more powerful than Core 2 Solo, but with a better processor it ticks all the boxes.
Acer Timeline that he bought
Acer Timeline with the spec list.

The clever bit is that You have both and integrated graphics and dedicated graphics card. You switch between them whether You want better performance or longer battery life. Very nice laptop and much higher quality than what usually You would expect from Acer.

The more expensive £349 one looks like is actually worse spec, so the £309 one is a bargain.

Thanks Mieszko

They're AMAZINGLY cheap!

Forgot to mention I don't want Windows Vista EVER AGAIN but you could easily upgrade to 7 with the cash saved I guess.

I'll have a good look at them.

You do need to watchout for sata drivers with the acer laptops as they are specific to the make. If you try to install win7 you may need to create an iso image with the sata drivers captured to allow installation.
If you have any problems lmk & I send the info you'll need to get this to work. Apart from that issue the acer is a good little laptop but not very rugged – dropped my a few times & replaced the screen & hinges but still works well.

Also check with argos that you actually get the system discs & not just pre installed – this will save time when changing OS to win7

Dell Studio 15's are £500 with a Core i3, 3GB RAM, 320GB HDD and dedicated GPU.

I got one of these Acer's a couple of months ago:
Acer 5372Z
It's got a numeric keypad, useful for alt code entries for DTP work. I have CS4 installed and it seems to work well. Photoshop 64 bit came on board, not that you can tell. And CS4 installed in Win7 so easily the nightmare of the WinXP install was forgotten.

ebuyer usually have some well specced machines at bargain prices.