747 jock,
You can just change the keyboard mapping in XP - this means that the UK symbol will appear when you press the key, but the key won't have that symbol printed on it. This can be very confusing! You can buy overlays for individual keys, I believe, but they are just stick-on.
Obviously you could use an external UK keyboard without any problems - you could even replace the laptop keyboard with a UK one, but that would probably negate your savings.
With certain laptop keyboards it is actually possible to remove individual keys, so you might just be able to swap them around, but you would have to be VERY sure that it's possible before attempting it. And very confident in your technical ability - but if you are contemplating replacing the keyboard, what have you got to lose?
Edit: thinking about it, changing keys around doesn't help, as it is the Shifted symbol that is different.
SD