As much as I usually suggest just buying all the parts and putting it together yourself if it's not going to be used for much outside of web browsing, e-mail and office you ought to take a look at some of the cheap dell desktops.
yeah always a good idea to take out the hard drive before sending a laptop in. i hope they didn't end up charging $700 or whatever you mentioned earlier in the thread, that'd be completely absurd for replacing a $100 part.
So apparently you might be able to upgrade from Vista to 7 for only $50 depending on what version your going to. Leaked Best Buy memo reveals Windows 7 Upgrade pricing?