Hi techno. That sounds quite a good deal if there's no hidden problems with the internet side (sounds like you're convinced and happy with the deal anyway!

). Yes the minibook is fine for email and general browsing. I've had my Elonex since it came out last August and just to give you an idea of how mine has been used it's had all the new distros tried on it, and been changing files to suit what I want with the desktop, with help from this forum of course, to how I wanted it to run....
But now I've had the added advantage of being able to put it back to exactly the original OS as a mate who lives in North Africa is back here for six weeks and will be using it for.... just as you're going to do... email and general browsing. I got a 3G dongle off Ebay, a Huawei E220 which works perfectly with the Elonex OS, as where he'll be staying has no landline.
So it just shows that these little machines can be changed to run exactly how you want them to individually, i.e. original OS or a play around with the innards using other OSs available on this forum, if you fancy that sort of thing and want to know a little about Linux.
Enjoy!
Unh.