PC Hardware → Friend needs solid laptop for business use

Any recommendations on a solid WIN 7 laptop for a friend who will be going out on his own in a few weeks (entrepreneur). Strictly business use, MS office suite, still needs good horsepower CPU-wise I would think, graphics - meh, lots of HD space. Didn't give me a budget yet, but surely willing to spend a bit. I'm thinking Dell business site may be the way to go, but if anyone has suggestions please don't hesitate to share!

He's not technically savvy and I've been out of the hardware scene for a while - not even sure what CPUs are standard today.

TIA

This would be my recommendation if the budget (when you get one)allows:

»www.newegg.com/Product/P ··· 34215664

Dell Latitudes except the small/thin "executive fashion" models. E6500 is a good choice. Spring for the extra cost of 3 year NBD onsite repair plus the "anything you do the poor thing" accidental damage insurance. The builds are solid but it's easy to do things like damage the screen or spill something on it. Get the largest HD offered. You may want to max the RAM as well. Also, go for the highest-resolution display offered. Once you get it, you're not likely to be upgrading anything else except the HD until the day it's retired.

Getac »us.getac.com/
»us.getac.com/products/no ··· features
»us.getac.com/products/no ··· features

Panasonic Toughbook
»www.panasonic.com/busine ··· k-52.asp
»www.panasonic.com/busine ··· k-53.asp

Lenovo ThinkPad T series laptops is what (in your own words) solid laptop for business, if funds allow, well worth the investment in the long run.

As usual this forum delivers. Thanks to each and every response - we'll use these as our launching point this morning. He'll be doing a lot of presentations and seemed mostly concerned with hard drive space.

This. Or at the very least, look at the business side of various manufacturers. Only one I have had the experience with is Dell's business side. If Lenovo has similar offerings (not just in hardware, but support and warranties), that is also a viable choice. Notably, unless he is wanting to be 100% hands on and/or spend valuable time/money on fixing the notebook when things break, get service plans!

Thanks again guys, all good and interesting recommendations. Those getacs are wild. He ultimately opted for a $600-ish Dell latitude. Guess he didn't want to spend as much as I thought, but he's very happy. Well done DSLR!

Second on the Lenovo ThinkPad T series, bought mine for school 14 months ago from their outlet store ($670 referb. with 1 yr warranty). Upgraded it to 16 GB ram and 240 GB ssd, and with its 9 cell battery it runs for 7-8 hours easy.