5punk

Right, my dad's after a laptop for work.

Needs:
To be cheap.
Windows happiness.
512mb of ram.


Doesn't need:
Windows installed.
Wireless
Anything special


Any ideas?

this is a cheapo
http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=24041

only 256mb ram, and it includes xp home

I've not looked hard, and the post of the prof's does look hard to better, but while at uni (2 years ago about now) I found dell to offer the best deals for a basic laptop.

However they will phone you twice daily to extend the warranty that came with the machine.

Cheapy Dell is a good option, as I have set a few cheapy Aria's up here at work, and well, they are a bit shit narf.

You get what you pay for, but atleast with Dell you know you'll have driver support forever and a day.

I also have had good experiences with dell for the cheap side of the market.

At work I've had pretty good experience with Dell all round (servers, workstations, tape drives and laptops). More reliable than the other stuff in general. The workstations would be a bastard to upgrade for a home user, but that's not an issue with a laptop and also I'd recommend a Dell to anyone whose not particularly computer savvy (which I'm assuming your dad isn't).

For what it's worth, my Dell laptop has served me well for the past 3 years.