small/cheap laptop

[Andy]

I need a dirt cheap laptop to use for school.  It will be used almost only for excel (because my fuckhead of a business stats teacher loves excel 2007 and likes assigning problems that you can only solve with excel 2007)  I can't get excel 2007 on my work computer and  this personal laptop will likely be carried in addition to my work laptop, so I'd like for it to be small.

any ideas?  I'd like to spend like $250 or so, but I don't necessarily want to buy a complete piece of shit.  I know I'm asking a lot.

[Gilly]

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-9?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

Good luck getting one though. Asus makes the eee or whatever too. They are barebones and it's the cheapest if you get them installed with Linux, but they come with Open Office too (or at least it can be installed for free) which is compatible with MS Office apps and just as good. $350 is about as cheap as you're going to get for a laptop. You could try finding something on Craigslist if you really only want to run Excel but I doubt you'll find anything that will run Excel 07 for under 350.

[Andy]

I wonder if they use the same charger as my Latitude?  Also, they still come up to like $500 even when they're bare bones. 

maybe I should just be cruising craigslist

[Gilly]

Why does it come out to $500? I didn't see anything to be added that's necessary if you're only using it for Excel and internet.

[moonshake]

I just find your professor's insistence on the 2007 version of Excel bizarre. Is there really some brand new feature only available in 2007? You can't make do with older versions? Cause the newest version of office is a beast and really sucks up all your computer's resources. It just won't run good on older/low-end computers. That's been my experience.

[yesno]

Small, not cheap.

http://h40059.www4.hp.com/hp2133/