"$399-$499 I wouldn't consider buying a second hand laptop in this range unless it was less than a year old and featured specs much better than the model above, like a super light weight (under 3 pounds), or a DVD recorder, plus a legal, licensed version of Microsoft Office. I wouldn't call it a bargain, but it's not a bad deal.

$299-$399 Same as above, except I wouldn't expect to find a DVD recorder in something this old. Any build in wireless will likely be 802.11b, which is much slower, but workable. I wouldn't touch a CPU under 1 GHz in this price range, whatever the model, and I'd still be looking for Microsoft Office to be installed.

$199-$299 I wouldn't buy a second hand laptop in this price range period, unless it was as good as the laptops listed above. It's just a really bad price point where you get conned into thinking you're saving money, but you end up having thrown away half the price of a new laptop on something you'll never be happy with.

$99-$199 A Pentium III or an AMD K6 CPU in the 350Mhz to 600MHz range, with Windows 98, 64 MB - 128 MB RAM, a 56K modem, USB 1.1, a CD Recorder and a battery that holds a charge for at least a half hour. You wouldn't throw away a hundred or two hundred bucks on a TV that couldn't receive cable, so why do it with a used laptop?
Free - $99 If I really needed a cheap laptop just to type on or get e-mail, I'd settle for anything with Windows 95 or better and an internal modem (probably 28K or 33K) that worked. If it's free, you can take it home and try it. If you're paying, make the seller demonstrate it dialing into their ISP and getting an Internet connection. Test the CD drive as well if you want to be able to try installing new software, it will be a CD-ROM (reader only)."


Just found this on a site where the folks know about these things.