My messange is that I was laptop hunting for a long time, I eventually got a decent one that isn't a "hand me down" spare.
I got a Clevo M37EW, which only cost me £406.50 off E-bay and worth over a thousand when new
(When I checked the prices - It didn't come with wireless as it stated in the auction when I opened it up, I didn't care because I was confident I would find a wireless card. I did and it came this morning and this is what I am using!
The wireless card cost £23.42 IIRC including VAT + Delivery
). I think I have saved a lot from the auction because very few bidded, we sniped it right at the last 15seconds and secured it!
The specs are as shown here
(
http://www.clevo.com.tw/products/M37EW.asp ), but this one comes with a 1.6ghz Centrino processor, an Intel WirelessPRO 2200g card, a 80gb hard drive
(See noteS
) and 512mbs of RAM, I may go up to 2gb soon enough, depends on my finaces.
Oh and it was 1 year old when I received it and I have modifed it a lot, here is a price list of the modifications:
Computer: £406.50
Hard Drive: £Free
(Pull from another computer - Approx £100 for 80gb otherwise
)
Wireless: £23.46
Bluetooth: £13.50
(PC card - intended for the PDA
)
Bag: £6.00
(£4.50 with 2% discount, I found it in a charity shop where I work - Most others don't fit the new one and the OEM one is disappointing!
)
Total cost to date: £447.96
Not bad, still over half of what a new one would cost.
So, all I can say, is shop around, investiage OEM companies and don't go for the cheapest, cheapest tend to be weaker and have shorter lifecycles, most now don't have the following additions:
Decent graphics card
(Usually a soft one, SiS, VIA or S3 is the order
)
Serial port
Parallel port
Firewire
Wireless
(PC card only or if not, USB
)
PC card
(on some I believe
)
TV port
PS/2 port
Card reader
(?
)
As you can see, cheap ones tend to drop a hell of a lot of features to do with functionability to save manufacturing costs. So if you have a PDA that you want to connect directly to a serial port without carrying a USB connector, check the specs carefully and not once, check it more than once to be sure. Some only come with a parallel port OR a serial port
(For example, my fathers Ferrari laptops have only 1 parallel port, whereas my clevo has 1 serial port instead.
).
And ofcourse, if you shop around, you may find a bargin!
I hope this has been of use to you
Also, do you need to see any pics of my one including what I got for it? If so, ask, just so you determine the quality, in fact, the bag from the charity shop is one suited for a Dell Computer
(as it has Dell on the front
) and it is certaintly more like my mums dell computer bag as she has a Dell laptop too. The only thing missing was the strap! Fixed that with another bags strap.
I was thinking you were talking about another computer. 
