like zivian said, get an old pentium 1 or 2. you can get one for free, ask local colleges, local council. my tutor gets them from the council tip because they pull them off of the pile of rubbish where the public pull up in cars and dump it. they pull computers off because they can be recycled, eg, the gold tabs on your pc cards are made of gold. Theres also silver, platinum and copper, all worth nice money At college last night there where two very nice 17" monitors, both beter than the monitor i currently own, im dont know if he got them from the tip or what but you bet he didnt pay for it! not everything you can get for free is rubbish you wouldnt touch with a barge pole. go down the dump and ask one of the supervisors if they have any machines around, they will probably have a pile of them and just pick 1 or 2 and make something a bit beter out of them. Id take a screw driver with you and get some sticks of ram from one of the other machines, maybe a second hard disc, the HDD might be too small for linux make sure you get one with at least 2gb on it.