Laptop suggestions/computing in the UK

[Ruahrc]

I know someone who is going to Bristol for a year to study. She wants to buy a laptop so she can take it there and back when she's done. Maybe you guys could help us out on what a good model might be to get or at least where to start looking.

We're not looking for super-duper performance here, basically Word, Internet browsing, and email. Maybe some DVD movie watching, but we won't need GeForce4Go's here.

Price- maybe around $1000, a little more if it's a worthy laptop. A laptop with good battery life, a nice screen, and windows XP would be really nice.

Ideally getting one of the superlight/superslim models would be good, since it would be nice and portable, since we don't need really high performance.

Dell (Latitude seires looks like their "slim" line?) looks like a good company, but is there a place where I can actually look at and use a dell laptop- like a dell store? There's a gateway store here, do they have good laptops? I have always thought Sony made good ultralights too.

Other companies (Sager, ASUS, etc?)

Now about the UK part- like I said she's going to the UK to study for a year, so basically what all does she need to be able to compute there? As far as I know all she'll need special is an AC adapter with the UK plug/power specs so she can charge her laptop, right? They use the same ethernet standards and stuff?

Ruahrc