I have a friend who recently broke the screen on his existing laptop, and has decided that he may want to purchase a new system.
Being a student, he's got a budget of £400. Yes, that's low, I know, but we are looking for a budget machine here - it doesn't have to roast games or blitz through PI calculations. It just needs to be a solid machine for what you pay for it and capable of handling typical usage.
If possible 64-bit support would be a big plus, but I know that at this price level you can't really find much in the way of 64-bit ness.
So far laptops that have turned up are:
Dell Inspiron 1300 (Celeron M 1.5Ghz, 256MB RAM)
Acer Aspire 3003 (Sempron 3000+, 256MB RAM).
With regards to the Aspire there have been some tales of unhappy user experiences, although I have an Acer Aspire myself, 5000 series, which is the updated version which has a better battery and a Turion 64, and I have few complaints with the system.
The Dell is an as-yet unknown quantity.
Thoughts, musings and experiences welcomed.