This is the standard configuration different companies are providing in their laptops –
Processor – AMD Turion 64X2 (1.5-2.0GHz) or Intel Core 2 Duo (1.5-2.0GHz)
In this case, the bus speed (the FSB) and cache memory are a catch.. The fact is that AMD Turion models have higher bus speeds as well as larger cache memory than Intel counterparts and still Intel is costlier.. So you can go for AMD. I would suggest go for Intel only if you believe in all the rumors that Intel is better than AMD any day, or you are ready to shell out 2-3K for Brand Sake, or both..
Performance wise, i have seen (and worked on) both and couldn’t found any difference in slowness/speed..
More than 1.5GHZ or 2.0 GHz, what matters is the cache and bus speed, although 2.0GHz will be better in performance than 1.5GHz.
1.8 and 2.0 won’t have that much difference provided the bus speed and cache are same in both.. guess its enough for you all to decide.
Windows – Mostly Windows Vista Home (with only a few models having XP Prof.)
Again, XP might suit you better, but vista is good too.. However there is a catch, with Vista, you will have to have at least 2GB of RAM to give some serious performance, as its resources consume a lot of it.. With XP you can do more than just well with 1GB RAM.
RAM – 2 GB (if you’re going for Windows Vista) or 1GB (would do for XP)
HDD – anything above 120GB should do.. However, if you require more (depending on how much you hate to delete data once stored in the hard disk) you can go for 160GB- 250GB.
Graphics Card – Intel accelerator X3100 OR Nvidia GeForce (shared) [very few models have a dedicated Nvidia memory card in them, though it is better and thus costlier, but Nvidia shared one would do nicely for all possible games like AoE, CS, NFS etc]