Okay, I'm kind of playing computer broker for one of my mom's friends. She wants a used laptop to give to her son for Christmas so he can use it while traveling. It'll need decent battery life, needs to be in pretty good condition, and I'm thinking something with a non-crappy OS would be nice. However, I'll probably look at just about anything, so throw some specs at me.

The price range is about $150-200 right now. Let's see what you've got.

If you want to play PC Repairman I've got a Gateway 450SX with new 40GB HD (tried to replace just before the video card went out) and original disks, power cord, etc. BUT something with the video card (or connector) is not functional. I haven't played with these newer Gateways (well, it's a 2002 model), so I can't tell you what all is involved with fixing it. Anyway, I think one battery still holds a charge for over an hour, I have a CDRW/DVD combo drive and a floppy (modular drives), 512MB RAM, built-in WiFi and its got a 1.6Gig processor. So if you fix it up, it would still be worthwhile to use.

Like I said, if you want to fix it up, I'll give you everything I have for $85.

If he wants it just for multimedia purposes, movies and music and such, theres a dremeo 20 gig protable media player on woot for 130

gosnmic: I'd like to have something that's working already, but since time is short I may PM you to set up a time to look at it after I talk to her again.

Other than that, I'm definitely looking for a laptop. She's willing to spend up to $250 now, but I don't think it'll get higher than that.