I'm going to buy a laptop - can you help me out?

[Chukie sue]

Sadly, I only have about 200$ to spend. I'll be buying it online.

I'm not looking for an amazing laptop (if the budget didn't already imply that) however running google chrome and PSO at a decent speed would be cool. Additionally, battery life would be very nice as well.

All I really need is for it to be a Windows and have wifi ability. I've heard that processing speed ram is what contributes towards making it faster - is this true? If so, should I buy the ram separately or is it cheaper to buy it with the laptop?

I'm a fan of Windows xp so I've been looking into those... All I need it for is for writing, studying, occasionally PSO (I'm perfectly fine playing with all the settings on low), and surfing the web... Oh yeah, a hard drive with 20+gb on space would be ideal...

[Nitro Vordex]

You're going to want to save up a little more money, as anything near decent would cost ~$300. Surf Newegg (www.newegg.com) for some good deals, especially around the holiday sales.

[Outrider]

I'd also recommend keeping an eye out for deals on Slickdeals (http://slickdeals.net/).

I picked up my Dell netbook for around $250 (down from $350) about seven or eight months ago by spotting it on Slickdeals. It's a Windows 7 machine and I love it.

[Chukie sue]

Really? I'm using an emachines 2002 windows xp with 504 mb ram so just about anything is an improvement.

I'll also keep an eye no those sites, thanks.