Out of Pod Experience

Depends what you mean by cheap. I have a three year old laptop, runs EVE fine, and everything else I use it for. Those two above will run it, but those hard drives should not be there. SSD's were virtually made for laptops. Laptop is for working/playing, not mass storage with a mechanical drive. That's a huge bottleneck in there and if you bump/drop your laptop those hard drives can damage and fail. They do, I know, the one I have now use to have one. Now it's like an entirely new laptop.. apart from it not being a 2 in 1 (convertible lap/tab) which is what I'll get next. As for video, the mobile intel HD does well enough, yes.

I think it is pretty stupid so many regular laptops all ship with SSHD's (SSD/HDD hybrid drives) now (seeing what's offered out there today). I do like Toshiba, this might be worth looking into: http://www.toshiba.com/us/custom-laptops
I'd go with 2ghz+ cpu
At least mobile intel HD graphics but nvidia if offered, my pref choice for it's gaming optimization support due to being a leading dev tool provider.
128 or 256gb SSD

But if I was looking at bargain laptops and the only choice is hybrid drives etc, I'd pull it and slave it to my desktop computer, drop in an SSD. You can always download windows for free, install and re-enter the product code written on the bottom of the laptop. Actually worth it anyway in that case, most manufacturers bloat the system up with all their own garbage apps.

I'd probably go with this: http://www.toshiba.com/us/computers/laptops/satellite/S50/S50-CBT2G22
With the 256GB SSD selected. Toshiba makes the best SSD currently anyway. I'd still wipe it on delivery though, install windows without the extra bloatware.

I mean if I were gettting something right now, something like that would be in the ballpark for the price anyway. I'm waiting on two things, Win10 (or 9.99999) and a little better CPU on the 2 in 1's. But currently I have a laptop and a tablet, so no rush here.