Oh - inexpensive.

Was going to recommend the new MacBook. It's all kinds of great. I don't know how I ever did without the trackpad.

I had a little Compac that I loved - it did me well, had it for 5 years or so. They are quite cheap at the moment.

Was going to recommend the new MacBook. It's all kinds of great. I don't know how I ever did without the trackpad.

I don't know what I ever did without the backlit keyboard, although daughter (for whom I bought a white macbook) disses it to no end.

There are plenty out there in the 5-600 dollar range, with Vista and lots of RAM, though.

I love the backlit keyboard also!

And the other day - when I went to copy an address into my address book from an email, when I went to copy it, it highlighted the address, allowed me automatically add it to a contact - THEN BROUGHT UP THE RIGHT CONTACT TO ADD IT TO. I nearly died with excitement.

Yes. I have no life.

I've been a die-hard Dell fan WRT laptops for a decade but this year I dropped them for a sweet HP. Got the same model for the wife while Daughter the Second got a cheaper one for herself.

Sorry, Dell, another customer lost.

Refurb Thinkpad.

the eeepc is cute, but for what you pay you could get an asus or acer that is a lot more practical for most people. Bigger hard drive, reasonable amount of ram, etc. Most of the eeepcs can't even run windows. and yeah, we can all be "linux is the way to go!" or whatever, but realistically most people will want Windows and Office on their system, and will want to use programs or play games that require a major OS.
I'd say, to be honest, that asus is going to be the best bet in the super low price range. They make the motherboards for a lot of the bigger-name systems, so even though they're a new name in the systems market, they're not a new company.

caveat. I am a computer distributor. I am not your computer distributor. well, maybe I am, but you'll never know since I'm the middleman