very cheap light notebook required

[lurkingfromhome]

My laptop has just died but no great tragedy as I never liked it much anyway. I do 99% of my work at home on a PC but every now and then I like to go to a café for a change of scene. So I need a super light thing for working on Word and Excel docs plus emailing and Internet. That's it. Nothing fancy, as it's just for occasional use.

I really don't want to spend much on this as most of the time it will sit around unused while I work on the PC. Husband might want to use it for internet surfing now and then. Second hand is fine as long as it works.

What should I look for and how little can I get away with spending? I've seen an Asus notebook with Windows. 8.1 on Amazon marketplace for £125, used but vg condition. Would this be worth a punt?

How about a Chromebook? This [Lenovo](www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3325407.htm) is £150 and has a long battery life. It's not quite as light as I'd like and not as cool as an MB air but it is a lot less

Aah, thanks code. I weighed my current laptop and it's around 3.5 kg so this would be much lighter and easier to schlep about with. I will have a look and see if I have any Nectar points hanging around that might give me even more of a discount.

If you really need Word and Excel, then be aware than unlike a regular PC or Mac, you'll be restricted in what 'extras' can be installed on a Chromebook.

It is, as the name implies, going to be running the Google Chrome OS. I know Microsoft has plans for support of pretty much all platforms, but would hate for you to find that documents you work on are no good back (eg compatibility/ formatting issues) at the work HQ, if you see what I mean.

Thanks, both of you. Yep, I do need Word and Excel and so I think it's back to the drawing board in my search ... I'm still looking at the notebook I saw on Amazon marketplace but it only has 2 gb of ram and I think I really need 4 gb to avoid it being far too slow. I think I'd better up my budget a bit ...

My last laptop was an Asus aspire 3935 - 14", lightweight, hd screen and did me through uni and my computing degree - I've only upgraded because now I use photoshop/illustrator a lot and it did slow my old laptop. However the aver did fine for browsing/word/excel. They're about £100 now refurb. There is a known fault with the wireless button (I had a warranty repair) but if you did get a wonky one - a plug-in wireless single bypasses the problem.