Current laptop advisory pls...

So teh wife needs a new laptop for her business. Something relatively light/small, needs to run Office (including largish Excel and Visio) and SQL Server Express with some light ERP-level config type work going on.
Thing is, not really keen to be paying significant dollars - it's only used a couple of days a week. So what's your guys take on a good option there? She pointed out the Thinkpad X100E (http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/30/lenovo-thinkpad-x100e-review/) but that feels a bit too notebooky for running what she needs - or are these things are little more powerful than I give them credit for?

Oh, and ideally something Ingram Micro would have as can buy on account there.
Chur...

Office (and related apps) don't demand shit in terms of processing power. I've got a machine somewhere here that is a P4 1.3ghz with 1gb ram and it runs Win7 and Office 2007 totally fine.

Where you WILL find them slower is the start up process - which you get around by just not closing your apps/shutting down the OS. Use sleep. Long as you got 2gb+ of RAM, it would be fine.

Something like this seems to be the competition:
http://www1.ap.dell.com/nz/en/home/notebooks/inspiron-11z/pd.aspx?refid=inspiron-11z&s=dhs&cs=nzdhs1

But in saying that I haven't kept up with the AMD Neo stuff so can't speak to it.

Otherwise, find a 13" laptop - still plenty portable.

Although I say 13" is plenty portable, while at the same time sometimes fit my 15.4" 2.9kg machine in my manbag

Cheers kris, yeah I'm thinking 13" will give more oomph at a lower price than trying to pack into an ultraportable. Will probably just ask Ingram Micro what they recommend.

Actually realised I'll just give the Macbook Pro that decent hard drive and she can do it all on a Bootcamp Windows 7 install... I'm practically MAKING money here...

Sorcery!!!!