Just to get the ball rolling... You can purchase refurbished macbooks via Apple's web site: http://tinyurl.com/3rwcwa It doesn't sound as if you need to keep right on the bleeding edge of technology so I see no problem economizing a bit on disk size and processor speed. FWIW, I wouldn't hesitate too much on a used macbook that was running Tiger instead of Leopard which is what you are likely to find from non-Apple sources. I'm still running Tiger (Leopard disk is still in it's wrapper) and am quite content. HTH, Chris Woods