Travel Technology - Laptop for just games and movies

Mrs dd has been looking at hand-held games for a while and is not impressed. Now she is thinking of getting a laptop (mini, maybe?) to haul on vacation with her to play games and watch movies in-flight, for the most part. She is more of casino/word/bounce-out kind of player than a super-mega-endoftheworld-shootemup/deathsheadavenger kind of player. Anyone have a suggestion as to where I could start looking?

You might want to look at an Eee. Generally it runs a Linux
Operating system and it can do pretty much what you are looking
for.
They also have some with MS Windows Operating system.

The Acer Aspire One that Amazon has on sale for $379 runs Windows XP and will otherwise meet her needs.

Does she want an optical drive (CD/DVD) or would you rip the video to files before the flights? If the former then you'll need a larger computer or to buy an external optical drive.

Okay, now I'm leaning toward the Dell Mini-9 with an external cd/dvd drive. A little more, but I'm used to Dell stuff and not much of a techie.

Okay, now I'm leaning toward the Dell Mini-9 with an external cd/dvd drive. A little more, but I'm used to Dell stuff and not much of a techie.

Just keep in mind that the Mini9 only comes with SSD drives, which severely limits the amount of stuff you can carry. If the machine is going to be used to store movies on the harddrive, you'll want one with a larger storage option.

I cannot speak to the games, but I travel with a Sony Vaio TZ and it works well for movies (great computer in general to travel with - very light). Has an internal DVD drive, external DVD control buttons, and a great screen. Space is not an issue as I either rent my movies from iTunes or Movielink or bring physical DVDs for my trips. The new TT model even has a Blu-Ray player in it, though not sure the extra HD will really make a difference on an 11" screen.

I'd also go for one of the small XP laptops. Trying to install anything in my EEEPC is a right pain in the bum.
SSD isn't much of a problem, assuming you can get (and store your movies on) an SD card.