I've picked up some like that on Woot and it worked out. You'll probably want to pick a 240 or larger GB SSD and price out the RAM.
Hello, I am looking for a decently cheap laptop to use for school, Internet browsing, occasional movies, and a small amount of gaming... Keep in mind, a decent, cheap laptop...
I am currently using an HP Stream 11 notebook... Now, it's a decent system, for Internet browsing. I am not a fan of the AMD chipset/cpu, not happy with no disc drive, and pissed off that the hard drive and ram is soldered to the board and cannot be upgraded. I mean, for an engineering student, 2gb of ram, 1.8ghz cpu, and 64gb of hard **** storage (is is a solid state) is just not cutting it... I need to find a better solution that one break my bank account.
I ran across a good deal on one that is a couple years old, but the specs seem pretty damn good.
$226 refurbished Dell Latitude E4310... Intel Core i5 2.67ghz, 4gb ram (supports 8gb total), nvidea onboard video 2gb, 250gb hard drive, 13.1 inch display, 6 hour battery life, blu-Ray drive...
I am drawn to the Latitude series of laptop due to them being relatively durable, actually having disc drives, and they aren't super flashy.
It is a bit older, but my question(s) is... If purchased, maxed out on memory and possibly use a Solid State Hard drive, would it be worth it? Could I rival or keep up with some of the newer systems in terms of performance? For use with Internet, spreadsheets, movies, and some autocad and limited gaming would it be able to keep up?
Any input is greatly appreciated. If it's not a good idea, I'm open to hearing better solutions, I just don't have a million bucks to spend on a top line machine.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic