Fish,

I can't help with the laptop, but I might save you some money if you are looking at buying off ebay (and possibly others in the same boat).

There has been a couple of dodgy sellers on ebay flogging couple of year old laptops for around $500-$600 bucks. You should be pretty careful with these, make sure you have a genuine street address (not an empty lot), get a landline number to call them, don't rely upon hotmail or generic email addresses and make sure they have all positive rep on ebay. Ebay management take this sort of thing very seriously, so have a read of their FAQ and email them if you are in doubt.

A friend of mine got done for $550, ended up with $375 back after they caught the guy (thanks to Ebay more than anyone else), so I believe that they have cleaned this up a fair bit, but always be careful.

Cheers,
Dave
Therapy Masters
KE25 Corolla #80