Advice on a laptop?

[Sheyceli]

So I'm planning on buying a laptop soon. I used to have one, but then it was stolen, so my mom's helping me get a new one. The thing is, I don't know what to get, and I don't want to get the wrong thing. Some important notes:
* We don't have a lot of money, so it can't be a super expensive laptop. I've been saving up for a while and I've got $132 in the bank, but that's it. I don't know how much my mom has or will have.
* I would use it mainly for my writing (I write books), as well as homework. I do play some computer games and burn CDs though. (It doesn't have to be able to do this, but it'd be a nice bonus.)
* I would definitely use it often, so it'd be nice if it could handle frequent use.
* I dislike Windows Vista. I'm sure once we get the laptop we could install an older version of Windows onto it, but I'm just throwing that bit of info out there. My last laptop had Vista and it was terrible.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I don't know much about types of laptops, what they can do, or how long they'll be suspected to last. I'm not picky or anything, I just want a laptop that will work for me that isn't too expensive. Thanks!

[Corny]

Money is the limiting factor here.
You can get acer netbooks for around $250. Better ones up to $400 .. the small ones only do have a 10inch display, which is fairly small - but usually enough to work with. A problem for your writing would be the small keyboard. Maybe you could get some cheap USB or bluetooth keyboard instead. If you are writing at home you can also use an old monitor/lcd, just check that your laptop has the necessary ports to connect them. Most netbooks can burn dvds and cds, most of the new ones have win7 installed. It's imho much better than vista, but still different from XP (imho in a good way).
Gaming on netbooks is not really a "joy". But simple games and browser games might work. Nothing with too much 3D graphics though.

[otc877]

Chromebooks:
http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=os_chrm_58?&node=2858603011

Relatively cheap (lowest price is 349.00) runs on Chrome OS.

Basically, it's a laptop that will only connect to the internet. If you've ever used the web browser Chrome, then you've essentially experienced Chrome OS.

You'll be able to write your books in Google Docs (try it out at www.google.com/docs) as well as do your other homework there.

You can play browser games, but that's not really the intent of these laptops.

I'm not sure if you can burn CDs.

It's designed to run as quickly and as smoothly as possible to get you straight to the web and nothing more. Frequent use should be no problem.