Spring RTS Engine

My mother is going to be getting a laptop for work, so she's asked me to look at a brochure and pick out which one she ought to get.
The brochure is from Dell, and she has told me that that is what I'm going to be able to choose from, so it boils down to choosing from the Inspiron and Latitude series. I've settled on the Inspiron 1300 because it is the cheapest, and, lets face it, you don't need much for typing, keeping files and pictures and such. (And no, I'm not going to invade it for multiplayer gaming)
So I've got a question. Once she gets it, I intend to install Spybot S&D, AVG Antivirus, Firefox, and what else should I do to get it set up properly?

Sygate firewall, Open Office, TASpring.

I should probably add this:
256mb shared DDR SDRAM (upgrade to 512: $50 USD)
Intel Celeron M Processor (360 1.40GHz 1MB L2 Cache, 400MHz FSB) (upgrade to Intel Pentium M Processor (1.73GHz): $100 USD)
Spring ain't happening

Windows Antispyware is a free download, and it has zapped 7 spyware thingeys that slipped by spybot.

Celeron? blah! I hope it's not cacheless?

Hijack this is the software you need if you want to catch spyware at the roots. I guarentee it's more effective then windows antispyware. 90% of antispyware/virus suites work off of definition, hijack this just reports everything that's using the known windows security holes and leaves it up to you to decide what should and shouldn't be there. Different spyware suites catching different things is compleatly dependant on thier definitions, hijack catches everything and then some.

BTW: Fear the crappyness of celerons.

honestly... if you have free /cheap MSOffice... get that not Open Office... to us nerds it's the exact same thing, but to people have been using Office forever... it's all completely different...

I would suggest gaim, and make sure she has accounts for everything... saves future headaches if you are her tech support... and don't for get QT and RP Alternative and Flash 8... and Video Lan Player...

oh... and for some reason the female of the species require Solitaire (both card and mahjong)... I did a quick search and found that you can get more then any reasonable human could desire here...
requirtes python http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.4.2/
http://pygames.sourceforge.net/

seriousely... also, she's going to be tempted to install the spyware available at sites with free games... like pogo.com...(not sure if they still have spyware), so find out what sites she frequents and "make sure they work right"... for her...

I would reccomend reading up at Toms Hardware Guide...

http://www.tomshardware.com

you can pick out some hardware on his reccomendations and reviews that will get exactly what you need done for the cheapest price...

basically he'll get you the best bang for the buck...

take a few days, read over the articles, etc, do some searching, and some planning, and you won't get ripped off for a really nice processor that only has a 16kb 2nd level cache and has a bus speed of 1200mhz, but is stuck on a 800mhz board... with 667mhz ram... lols..

you'll be ALOT happier when you don't screw yourself buying a pre-packaged piece of crap...