> Not in my experience. People buy them because they are dirt cheap.

My experiences are similar. Your average person in Michigan wants to walk into Best Buy/Wal-Mart and buy a $300 computer that does everything they want. Any more than that and the think you are trying to rip them off.

£220 isn't that cheap compared to used laptops. I bought a refurbished Chromebook for some £165 because I'd always complained loudly about not being able to buy a little ARM netbook with good battery life and native Linux, and I thought I should put my money where my mouth is. However, I found the battery life unimpressive for ARM, the OS irritatingly limited, and the build quality relatively poor. I dropped it and cracked the screen about two months ago, and as an emergency replacement bought a used Dell Latitude D430 (2GB RAM) from a local shop for £115. It's a dream, a nicer laptop in almost every way - rather faster, phenomenal keyboard (with F1-F12 and a delete key, thankyouverymuch), magnesium frame.