Help please with buying a laptop

[Parliamo]

I need a new laptop for work. I might take it to work sometimes (now they've finally relaxed the rules and allow home devices on the network)

I want to be able to manage photos, link up the Sony hifi properly (currently works poorly on wifi), manage iPhones and iPad.

The biggest problem I seem to have at the moment seems to be storage.

The boy in pcworld told me that I should look for quad core processors, and recommended a Microsoft hp pavilion 2 for £380. But I was worried it might not have enough storage.

Also, anybody any ideas for how to organise music? I've been using iTunes but am frustrated by being limited to Apple devices, and even more so by the problems I've has transferring music between computers. The bulk of my music is originally from cd (some fairly eclectic and doesn't seem to be available digitally)

I'm afraid I have nothing helpful to add, but just marking place as I'm currently looking for a laptop for a 10 year old and would be interested to see what's recommended for you.

This one might have to be a slow burn till the techy people get in from work!

A shameless bump, with an anybody there??

A bump as I am in the same position as I got the screen of death on my laptop yesterday!

Storage wise, would you be accessing from somewhere with WIFi, in which case online storage or having your own NAS drive may be sufficient. Then the laptop could have a sensible amount of storage but access more when it has a WiFi connection.

Storage is cheap these days, so go for most you can. You may want to consider SSD (solid state drive) if budget allows and if laptop will frequently be moved, as that does not have moving parts and so won't mind a bit of movement.

I considered the ssd thing, but having to get out an external hard drive just seems an extra hassle, and that's the solution we have at the moment. It means I have three years worth of photos to sort, and I can't remember the last time I listened to any decent music!

Every time I think I've found one, I check the reviews and there's something about it sounds rubbish, or I read a review and it sounds great, but then I can't buy it. Grr.

Which shops give good advice?