Hi there,
If you're looking for a no-frills laptop, you should take a look at the Samsung nc10.
Very small laptop with 10.2" screen, windows XP, 1gb of Ram and 160gb hard disk and weights in at 1.3kg. Keyboard & display are very good, but graphics card spec is quite basic so don't expect to be able to play the latest games.
Perfect for surfing the net, editing Word/ Excel docs etc., starts-up & shuts down in 30-40 seconds and you should get around 6 hours real-world use from a single battery charge.
I bought mine from Elara.ie last week (ordered Friday morning and delivered first thing Monday morning). Worked out at €400.95 including shipping.