-Stammer-

ipad 

 New Egg is probably a good place to start they will swap parts for you so you only pay for what you need. Start with the  platform style you like  with the best possible processor stuff as much ram in it as you can afford. 256mb solid state drive should be fine as youre probably better off investing in external drives rather than internal. 

More than size/speed, if it comes to laptops, I look at the max temp of the main processor(s). If they can survive to a higher max temp, they will most certainly survive longer at average temp versus something with a lower max temp.