I strongly disagree for many many reasons.

You get what you pay for in most cases. Sometimes you can overpay but a general rule is, if it's cheap it isn't going to last. It'll be of poor quality and will fail quickly. Used computers come with no warranty and often are missing important discs. Hardware is older, often abused and there is no guarantee of the safety of the hard drive. If you pick one up which needs drivers but have not been given the cds that come with it or a clean set of restore discs made you will run in to problems and some manufacturers will charge for replacement cds. Home burnt cds can be infected with parasites.

That's just 2 reasons, there are many more.

For my friends I always tell them to buy the best they can afford and best features for that money as well and it will last you the longest. Plus buying a GOOD extended warranty like squaretrade as well because if it breaks and they cannot repair it for less than 25 percent value they literally write you a check or paypal your purchase price minus what you paid for the warranty to buy a NEW one. A 350 dollar laptop is probably junk and read the fine print. Laptops under 400-450 don't have a year warranty they are 90 days. Then there are special promotional model laptops like door busters for thanksgiving black Friday sales ( the cheap stuff) that are 250-350 and have only 30 days warranty. That for me is insane to only expect your computer to function for 1 to 3 months.

That's why I love UK laws, the sales of goods act basically means that anything sold must last for a "reasonable" period of time, even second hand stuff sold by a retailer. This sometime is longer than any warranty period they offer. The retails hate it mind you

Tell me what you can afford and what you require as far as features and I'm happy to help you shop online to get the best for what you can afford.... As long as you don't ask for me to shop under 300 that is lol

I think we will be more helpful if we had a budget to work with.

@rich must be nice , I bought a laptop from Best Buy ( a huge retailer in electronics and usually good prices for buying retail) I asked for the best laptop I could get for 550 ish plus taxes and my main focus was getting the best graphics for the money. Memory and HD space could take a hit on because they were upgradable to 4gb at the time. I get this thing home and set it up and it can barely play Netflix on full screen without chopping up. Turned on wow and had 9 fps.... Less than my Acer atom netbook at the time. Obviously within 3 hours I ended up taking it right back to the store. Then they actually fought me on taking a return like I waited too long. OK bad memories from a botched laptop sale.... Short story is it was a model made specifically for best buy and turned out to have the 90 day warranty ... It was junk. Even though I paid in cash they made me wait two weeks for a check refund. I emailed the president about it and what they didn't know is I recorded the entire sale and all the interactions for a school project. Came in handy when I linked the CEO staff to watch what their store had done. Needless to say I got about 200 off the laptop of my choice which was a awesome save on best buys executive staff.

i got a asus for about $600

What are the specs?