Thanks Dibbels, daverobev and gimp.
daverobev: as I said, not in the least techy, so it's useful to see your views: thanks. On size, the laptop is essentially a desktop substitute, and is unlikely to leave the house much (but does move around inside the house, so a desktop is not the answer). I do need reliability, a biggish screen and decent power for some serious word-processing (think rewriting the tax-code serious), and it has to be windows/word or wordperfect for compatibility, so no Apple. Not a gamer, so graphics irrelevant but do seem to come with the screensize I need. Screen res I agree not perfect, but otherwise the screen gets good reviews so for the price I can live with it, I think.
Thanks again to all.