My current laptop is slowly expiring and I'd like to get a new one that'll survive fieldwork in Africa - dust in the dry season, humidity in the rainy season. It also needs to be as light as possible, and powerful enough to run word, endnote and SPSS, ideally also some sort of media player to keep me sane. It also needs a very reliable battery that won't get knackered after three months (access to power will be intermittent so I'll be running it on the battery quite a lot). What kind of laptop worked for other people who've been in similar situations?

He hasn't told the university yet, so I don't think he knows for sure. But it's encouraging that it's been done

Help! My supervisor, who I get on really well with, has told me in confidence that he's going to moving to another institute later in the year. He seems pretty confident he can take me with him but I'm a bit sceptical, although he's great academically he's seemed a little less than totally clued up on the practicle aspects before. It'd be great if he could - the place he's going to has much better facilities for what I'm doing, and is much closer to where my family lives. But surely my university wouldn't be happy to lose a PhD student, and I've never heard of a mechanism to transfer one over. I'm a little concerned that I'll end up at the same university, with a new supervisor who doesn't have as much expertise as my current one (it's a fairly small field) and with whom I may not have such a good relationship.

Help!