HELP on NX9005

Hi all,

I'm off to uni soon (VERY soon) and have left buying a laptop til
pretty late (woops!) - not good. I guess I thought it would be
relatively simple, seeing as desktop PCs are (I build mine myself, so
I get only the components I want). I was wrong.
I have been advised to buy a HP Compaq NX9005 (probably from Ebuyer
and intend to get an EXTRA 256MB RAM + external mouse) spec AMD
XP2400+ 256MB RAM 40GB HD, as they are reasonably priced, and have
seen that they have good write-ups on the Ebuyer site. However, it
got a pretty awful write-up in What Laptop (Oct 03 p.55) with 3/5
overall:
*Performance 3/5
*Build quality 2/5
*value for money 4/5
-unpleasant keyboard
-naff touchpad
-battery life 11 mins away from mains!!!
Surely this cannot be! Contradicting Ebuyer's user reviews. 11 mins
is pathetic and I need someone to reassure me that they do in fact
have a decent battery life - I'm sure the What Laptop model was
faulty.
I will be using the laptop quite heavily (I'll be studying electronic
engineering, so for programming, internet, word processing, etc) -
will this be suitable? I CAN'T afford anything much more expensive
(MAX £950 inc. vat, the cheaper the better) and need to get the system
bought SOON! Any students / owners out there with this laptop? Please
tell me what
you think of it, and whether it would suit my needs!
Thanks in advance,
Luke.