You can get a lot of laptop for little money. That's what I learned recently as I test drove four inexpensive notebooks from Dell, HP, Toshiba, and Lenovo.
I typically find myself evaluating cutting-edge machines that have the fastest processors on the market, the latest high resolution screens, Blu-ray and HD DVD drives, and exotic perks like external wireless network finders, solid state drives, and touch screens. But these features, desirable as they may be, are expensive and hardly essential for the average user.
For a change of pace I thought I'd look at laptops available to consumers on a budget — the kind of notebooks that might make for realistic holiday gifts for immediate family. And I was surprised at how impressive these modest machines can be. All of the notebooks in my test group had DVD burners, built-in wireless, at least 1 gigabyte of memory and dual-core processors.
In other words, unless you plan to run demanding graphical applications like PC games or professional 3D rendering software, the four portable PCs I'm about to discuss have all the juice most of us would ever need.
Dell Inspiron 1501 ($579)
The least expensive of all the models I tried — indeed, one of the cheapest laptops you're likely to find anywhere — Dell's Inspiron 1501 is far more powerful than I'd have imagined such an inexpensive machine could be.
Taking just 30 seconds to go from black screen to fully loaded desktop, this notebook was far and away the fastest to start up of the four laptops I tested — though that likely had a bit to do with the fact that it was also the only machine that was running Windows XP (the others came with various versions of Microsoft's resource-ravenous Windows Vista operating system). Once powered up, an AMD Turion 64 X2 processor combines with an ATI 1150 graphics chip and 1GB of RAM to provide more than enough power to handle typical productivity apps, Internet browsing, and casual multimedia viewing and editing.
To test 3D graphics and gaming capabilities I installed Command & Conquer 3, a 2007 game with modest system requirements, on all four machines. The Inspiron 1501 was the only notebook on which I managed to play through the game's first few missions without the machine crashing. Graphics settings were slid all the way to the left (that means low to you non-PC gamers), but there was virtually no lag, which leads me to believe this notebook would be fine for casual gaming.
A generous helping of jacks — including no less than four USB ports — surround the outer edges of the machine. It was also one of the lighter books in the group, weighing just shy of three kilograms — this despite its long-lived 9-cell battery.
So what will you be missing out on with the Inspiron 1501? Well, it's kind of ugly. The bright silver plastic finish is relatively inoffensive, but when combined with white trim on the sides, a black keyboard, and dark edging, things start to get a bit busy for my taste. And the screen, which boasts just a quarter of a million colours, is serviceable but far from spectacular.
Still, the Inspiron 1501 is almost foolishly cheap — a heck of a deal for students, small businesses, and anyone else on a budget.
Lenovo ThinkPad R61e ($849)
The one book I tested geared specifically for the workplace (it's the only one that ships with Windows Vista Business installed), the R61e has a professional looking magnesium matte black case — a hallmark of ThinkPad design — and tips the scales at a little over three kilos. It's also the only book tested that has a TrackPoint finger nub rather than a standard touchpad interface for mouse pointer control.
