Once you get to around 1gHz there's not much more you need for an on-board
laptop. At that CPU speed you're at least up to handling things like DVD
playback, so you can get multiple uses out of it as a chart plotter and a
disc player. Same thing goes for mp3 music playback.

One really good suggestion is pulling the drive and copying it. With the
money you'd save on a cheapie laptop you can get a pair of two new drives,
setup one of them and then make a copy of it. It might get a little geeky
for some folks. But you can get laptop to desktop IDE converters and then a
USB to IDE converter. Some USB converters already have a laptop-style
connector on them, making it even simple. Then you can just put the two
drives on a desktop via the USB port and copy one drive to the other.

Combine two new drives with two used 1Ghz laptops and you'd really have
yourself covered in the even one breaks. And it'd probably be cheaper than
just one brand new one.

Getting new drives is a great idea, for two reasons. One being the new
drives, at 7200 rpm, are sooo much better performance-wise than the old
drive. Just putting in a new drive with that faster rotational speed can
make an old laptop seem nearly new again. Secondly you get better shock
protection in most new drives. The old ones were good but the new ones are
amazing. The fact that you'd get a gargantuan amount of new storage space
is almost an afterthought. Just make sure your old laptop can handle a
bigger drive. If it's a 1gHz machine it'd be very likely to have no trouble
with any new drive sizes. But old/slower ones might.

Oh, and pickup a spare battery, a NEW one. They wear out.

-Bill Kearney