text: what are the bare minimum specs for a laptop to efficiently browse the internet? basically looking for whatever is the cheapest ($200 and under for used/refurbished) that can run the internet smoothly because i'm looking to buy in bulk.  thanks. if you want to have a pleasant experience in dealing with a 'bulk lot' of machines for web browsing you really want to get something that can run xp pro.  if you are going to try and keep me/98/95 etc secure for web browsing you have a lot more work to do than if you are running xp pro.  with xp pro you can administer the machines as part of a network and you have access to the far better security tools that microsoft put into xp and the tools that others supply for xp. with anything before xp you have to know what you are doing and have to be prepared to put in the work to keep them secure etc. can be done but life's too short in my opinion.  so the summary is the minimum specs you should be looking at, in my opinion are the minimum specs for xp pro which are here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/sysreqs.mspx  ///