Buy laptop best for OpenFOAM and general use
 

So I realise that my laptop can't run paraview due to my graphics card. It's also about time that I buy a new one after having it for 6 yrs.
I'm currently using my laptop for OpenFOAM (final year engineering project) which has ubuntu 9.10 as its entire OS.

I was wondering if anyone is dedicated and willing enough to write a detailed beginners guide to buying a laptop suitable for my requirements. I don't really play games besides use the internet a lot. But my main purpose is to use it for general Uni work and OpenFOAM.

Thanks.

This is not really an aswer as it is more of a BTW note.
Well, I am not sure if that will help someone, but I have installed the free software CygwinX on my laptop (which also includes FORTRAN, and much more). With CygwinX I can run Linux windows on top of WIndows XP and I can run my CFD FORTRAN programs as I would on my Sun/Unix machine. So I can have my programs running with graphics and still use the rest of my Laptop/Desktop as usual at the same time (if the program does not take all the CPU of course).

My laptop is a Dell Precision M65, not the latest model, but it has 2 core processors. I am sure there are better laptops out there for engineerinig whether at school (College, University) or professionally. With CygwinX I found my laptop performs as well as my (older) Sun Unix machine. Now Sun has been bought by Oracle so it is not anymore a Sun machine... Anyhow, I think people who use FORTRAN, C, Gnu, and all that might find Cygwin and CygwinX as neat to download on a laptop or on any other desktop PC. I think that probably is good for students as it is free. It is a way to have FORTRAN and other software for free on your PC running in a Linux environment.

If I were in your situation, I would go for a laptop with Intel i7 processor.
i7-720QM or better i7-820QM

e.g- DELL Alienware M15X/7714

Some configurations available in Germany are:
http://bit.ly/bQVv5Q

In my opinion- some factors to be considered are-
Processor - i7
RAM - at least 4096MB RAM DDR3 or better 8GB
HDD- more the RPM better or a SSD
Graphics Card- I do not think that is an issue with recent hardware and paraview- I could run paraview on a netbook !

Thanks for the info guys