.

This is pretty popular on slickdeals right now and looks to be a better buy ($80-$100 cheaper, not refurbed). Maybe spend the money saved and splurge on a SSD.
LINK

Agreed, get the ASUS that THRILLHO linked above and buy your own SSD. The Macbook specs are not that good, and the 1GB of RAM will be the biggest detriment, plus it only has a 90-day warranty. The Refurbed Dell is a bit better than the Mac, especially with the warranty. Its CPU is the fastest of the three PCs linked, but we're talking about 6-year-old architecture probably lacking some newer instruction sets, and using slower DDR2 memory. In addition, that SSD is likely one of the first consumer SSDs of its kind given the age of the chipset, and it will not be as fast as what you can get now, for a fraction of what people paid for them back then.

The only drawback of that ASUS (assuming you will get an SSD separately) is the relatively weak CPU (single-threaded performance in the Dell's CPU is about 80% faster), but nobody buys a <$300 laptop for CPU-intensive operation anyway. The ASUS's Celeron's TDP is also a fraction of the P8600 in the Dell. The ASUS's RAM will be faster and use less power.

The license key for windows 8.1 may be embedded and encrypted into the bios. You'll know this by looking at the bottom of the laptop for a Windows COA sticker. If the key is not on that sticker, it's embedded. Before swapping out the drive to add an SSD, extract the license key by following these instructions: LINK

You need the product key to legally download a recovery disk/iso of OEM Windows 8.1, and laptops no longer typically ship with recovery disks.

This is on sale right now at Newegg.

Crucial MX100 CT256MX100SSD1 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

$109.99 Think like 4 hours left or so.