~£250 laptop

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Today, i recieved a nice litter letter from the open university, saying that along with the finanical support that pays my course fees, i can request a PC grant of £250 to cover the cost of buying a pc/laptop, so my question is, is there any laptops for this price that is worthwhile?

Only laptop that OcUK sell that is in this price range is the Eee PC, but im sure other places sell cheap laptops as well. Its been a long time since i used a laptop, and i dont realy follow the tech, so i have no idea how far they have come.

Last time i used a laptop it was slow, took 30 seconds to load a text file with only 2 lines in it, took several min to load anything more intensive, like a PDF, and had tons of issues running windows 95 without crashing/errors. So would a Eee PC work well without causing me tons of frustration and make me end up throwing it out a window?

Bearing in mind, i only intend to use the laptop for coursework (so needs to be able to run office 2k or open office) and maybe stream videos accross wifi so i can relax a bit. No gaming will be done on it so thats not an issue.

 

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Does it have to be new?

yes, part of the conditions of the grant is that it can only be spent on a new pc/laptop and needed peripherals like printer etc.. and needs to have a receipt so i can show proof of purchase.

Not need a printer, or anything like that, it would be best if i put all the money towards the laptop, (doesnt matter if i go a bit over £250, as i will make that up with my own money).

 

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I think ill decide against the Eee pc, it seems a bit limited to what i can get for just a bit extra of my own money.

Ive just checking out the vostro 1000 NB(n1210007) on the dell site where you can customize the order, and currently it shows as £244 for everything standard except for ram, which is 2gb. Which isnt bad tbh, things like hdd and dvd/rw im not too interested in, as i can steam stuff to/from my pc that needs burning, or takes up tons of space.

with the AMD® Athlon 64 X2 Mobile Technology TK55 [add £30.00] and 9 cell Lithium-Ion Battery (85 Whr) [add £20.00] that would bring it up to £294, which works out quite damn well.

 

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I wouldnt necessarily pick a laptop based purely on price - This is one of your tools used to help you gain your qualification - not knowing if your course is engineering, software developement, etc. Will you be required to use any tools on the laptop as part of your course? If so, make sure the laptop has enough grunt to do the job.

The laptop wont need to have much grunt to it, all i will need to use it for is taking notes, word processing, graphs, spreadsheets. I have access to a PC that has the grunt required should i ever need to do anything more complex, the reason for the laptop is more for mobility and freedom, so i dont have to sit at my desk all day to write an essay, i can transfer the files accross to the laptop via wifi, and go out and do a bit of work while having a nice coffee and muffin or whatever i feel like at the time.

Edit: And don't bother getting the 2GB through Dell; 1GB Dimms can be had for £13 (for Kingston stuff) these days, so two of those and you're sorted. Could even sell the 512MB ones the notebook would come with, recoup some of the cost back.

Thanks, like i said its been a long time since ive had my hand on a laptop, i wasnt sure if parts could easily be upgraded without special tools, or if PC parts were even compatible with laptops.