>I am leaning toward Latitude with Intel Core Duo. But I was talking to a friend and he said to check that Dual Core processor would be compatible with regular XP OS and would be ok to use with 32 bit applications. Should I be concerned about it?

There were some issues with the cores runinning in different power saving modes and then switching apps. Dunno if this is fixed everywhere.

>I will be using this notebook for VFP, VS 2005, SQL Server, and some basic office automation applications.

Since they are using different processes double core should be the way to go. But go for leaving one RAM slot free for later upgrades or start with 2 GB.

my 0.02 EUR

thomas