My father bought a cheap Laptop about 3 years ago. It cosed about 1100€ at a discounter. It was a Intel 2,0 ghz (not pentium) with 256 MB Ram and 20 gigs of ram and a Radoen Mobility 7500. Though than that sounded great the laptop was crap since it was almost more time at the support tahn used by us. So he got a new one, an Acer TravelMate 291LMi, and it rocks. Pentium-m 1.4 ghz, 15", Ati Mobility Radeon 9700 with 64MB ram, 60 GB HD, DVD Writer, 512MB Ram. And it's extremely stable, made of good material. Great!
And even better since my father is gone for a week