I would get a good netbook, you can get one with quite a good size memory. My coworker recently bought him one to use for work (EeePC). He is very happy with it, he does programming, uses matlab, imaging softwares etc on it. The 160GB memory is enough for most of stuff and you should keep everything back upped anyway. 160GB word fits quite a many word files smile If he is doing something needing more storage space get him a external harddrive at that point. I would get one too if I would not have such a bad luck with pcs.