Well I worked for a company in the wireless division which also has a notebook repair center repairing Toshiba, Compaq/HP and NEC, it's not hard to come across some free notebooks/parts
I used a Toshiba Satellite 1730 notebook which is a Celeron 600Mhz, with 192MB Ram, I added a wireless minipci card. Has a 12.5" Active TFT screen.

So basically I've only spent money on buying the framing which has cost me NZ$60 so far.