Laptops are about 1 billion times cheaper than they were a few years ago, main things to look out for
1.Core, as Crowman said, get a minimum of a dual core, although i dint think many places sell single cores now anyway. And if you can get a Quad Core.
3.Memory, if its going to come with XP, you max is 3 Gig, dont let anyone try and sell you otherwise, as Xp is capped at 3Gig, even if you have 4 installed. If it comes with Windows7, depending on what version, memory is almost unlimited.
3.HD Space, hard drives are cheap as chips now, bigger the better.
4.Connectivity, wireless, Bluetooth ( not so much BT )
5.Blueray drive..then if you dont have a player, you can HD connect it to a TV
