Notebook for a Doctor/Researcher?

It's been a while since I've seriously looked at laptops, and when I did it was usually to look for things that were high-end desktop replacements.

Recently a friend asked me to give them advice on what kind of a notebook to get. He does medical research mostly, travels a good deal (needs to be light and long battery life), uses MS Office apps a lot (also means good screen for reading/writing), and wireless. Watches a lot of DVDs and listens to some mp3s, but nothing much else on the media end and no gaming whatsoever. Occasionally he also uses custom applications for research, I asked if these were processor/memory/graphics intensive, and he couldn't really give me much of an answer (not very tech savy). Also, _security_ is somewhat of a concern. He hates when the OS runs slow (but who doesn't, right).

He's currently using a Dell Inspiron 600m, 1 Gig of RAM, XP Pro SP2, 40gb drive (either 5400 or 7200rpm), ATI Radeon 9000 card.

I was thinking that a IBM/Lenovo thinkpad might do the trick, but I've never actually used one and have no idea about quality. But brand does not really matter.

Budget: 1500-1800.

Any good suggestions?

 

maybe a black macbook?
and office for mac

 

I thought about it, but I was just wondering what would happen in case certain research related applications would be used that would run only on PCs. :\

 

he could install windows xp/vista through boot camp or parrelels