Originally Posted By: wfaulk
I got tired of dealing with this and figured I'd call up IBM/Lenovo and buy a recovery CD. The odd thing is that this laptop must be seven years old, yet it's still under warranty. So I'm getting a recovery CD sent to me for free.

7 year warranty? That is pretty unusual. Great that they're able to send you a disc though. You can order any random part from IBM even for some ancient machine. It may cost you tho...

Originally Posted By: wfaulk
At the same time, I think a netbook might be a distinct step up.

Assuming that they don't mind the smaller screen, a cheap netbook would work well. Even the slowest x86 model should be faster than what they've got. Make sure they don't buy one of the non x86 ones though...