Drew’s Deals

Sub $500 Laptops

One of the most common request I get is for recommendation on a good, cheap general purpose laptop.  This holiday season there are plenty of options in the sub $500 category.  These laptops won’t be the lightest or fastest, but they will have enough oomph for general web surfing, office applications and multimedia playback.

Current favorites: Newegg.com -  Toshiba Satellite L305-S5902 NoteBook Intel Pentium dual-core T3200(2.00GHz) 15.4″ Wide XGA 2GB Memory DDR2 800 160GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi Intel GMA 4500M – Retail – $499.99

Best Buy Black Friday Doorbuster – HP G50-104NR Laptop with Canon 3-in-1 Printer for $349.99

If you are looking for an smaller, lighter option you may want to consider the new netbook category (recommendations coming soon).  Netbooks don’t offer much storage and are somewhat cramped for typing but they are ultra light and cheap.

Consumer Reports (subscription required) notes that no brand stands out as the most reliable, with Sony, Lenovo (IBM), Compaq and Toshiba faring slightly better than the rest.  In my experience, Lenovo machines tend to have the best build quality, especially their ThinkPad line.

After reading through the specs and reviews on the laptops below, I chose the Toshiba Satellite from Newegg.com.  Overall, Toshiba laptops have a good reputation and this laptop will perform well with the Dual Core processor and 2GB of RAM.  Reviews from Newegg.com and Amazon are positive.  The Black Friday $379.99 Toshiba deal at Best Buy is attractive but I don’t think it is worth waiting all night in the cold for it – your call…

Note: I only listed laptops with at least 2GB of RAM, running Vista on 1GB of RAM is not a pleasant experience.

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