Mark Gibbens

I use 34SP, and have been pretty happy so far. http://www.34sp.com/ I think they'll do me till I can afford Rackspace

He he - I probably over-sold it It's actually just as easy as the others to set up - and extending it is simple if you can upload files by FTP. But anyway up, you've got some great tools to choose from - looking forward to seeing the results

Re: Vista - it eats so much more of your system resources that it demands a much more powerful machine. Bit like running a high-performance sports car to travel 2 minutes to the shops in. There are licensing issues with Vista that would prevent me from ever buying it, but now we're onto to personal viewpoint Re: Ebay - I'd use it for spares, but I'd be worried about the reliability of the seller, unless you were buying from an ebay shop with clear guarantees, etc. One of the reason I've used Student Laptops is that they offer a small guarantee - but I'm inclined to agree with mr_chris, and think perhaps I did pay over the odds for a low-power machine.

Do you know about GCompris? GCompris is a really good suite of educational games - our kids started on it from age 2. And, on Linux anyways, GCompris integrates with TuxPaint - so the kids can do a bitmap picture in TuxPaint and then add to it with GCompris's vector graphics tool. (You can get GCompris for Windows.)

I'm a really big fan of Drupal. It's extremely flexible, configurable, and expandable, and I've found it really nice to hack and develop. Its taxonomy system (allows amazingly clever tagging, categorisation, etc) is among its "killer features" for me. Its downside (compared to the others mentioned here) is that it's a bit plain out of the box. Its lack of a WYSIWYG editor is one example - though it's straightforward to add stuff like this through modules. It might not be for you, but it might be worth a look just in case. Good luck, whatever you go with

I've bought 2 very good reconditioned laptops from www dot student-laptops dot co dot uk Are you sure you need a really up to date model and Vista?

Hiya - my first post - just registered My web development business is called WebFolk. I work co-operatively with other designers and developers to get the right skills involved for each particular project I work on. My own expertise is with front-end design, accessibility, and ICT project management. For E-commerce, I usually involve Robin Wood of Freedom Software, who is highly skilled in online software development and security. I'd be happy to help in any way you feel I can. [ps] as this is my first post, it appears I can't post links yet - but you'll find my site by googling "webfolk sheffield", or Freedom Software by googling "freedom software sheffield". My phone number is 0114 233 6539.