Notebooks at Netbook Prices: How Low Can We Go?
by Jarred Walton on July 28, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Best Buy Laptops
Shopping online at Best Buy, you can find items that are available at the stores as well as "outlet items" - discontinued items that are being sold at reduced prices. Some of the outlet items are particularly attractive, especially since we're not looking for top-end, modern hardware. The problem with these items is that we don't know how long they'll be available, and finding exact specifications is often difficult. As with Wal-Mart, there's definitely some attractive pricing available.
Priced at just $330, the Compaq Presario CQ60-211DX is a reasonable alternative to the $300 Wal-Mart laptop. As usual, there are a few notable differences. The processor is an Intel Celeron 585 (single-core, 65nm, 2.16GHz, 1MB L2, 667MHz FSB), which should provide similar performance to the Compaq Presario CQ60-419WM. However, you get 2GB RAM and the standard Intel GL40 Express Chipset/GMA 4500M chipset/graphics combination. Since this is an outlet item, we're not sure how long it will be available, but it's certainly a better alternative than the $450 Celeron 585 laptops we found at Wal-Mart.
This is possibly the best option in terms of bang for the buck right now, as you can get a dual-core AMD Athlon X2 QL-62 processor (dual-core, 65nm, 2.0GHz, 2x512KB L2, 3600MHz HyperTransport) and Windows Vista Home Premium for only $380. This laptop also uses an NVIDIA GeForce 8200M chipset and provides a 250GB hard drive. There's no webcam and it only ships with 2GB RAM, but you can upgrade the memory quite easily to 4GB for under $50. Battery life is listed as 2.5 hours, which is another drawback, but if you don't need to run on battery for long periods of time this should be a decent inexpensive laptop.
A similar system for a bit more money and 3GB RAM is the Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5965, which also upgrades the CPU to an AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-65 (2.1GHz instead of 2.0GHz) and switches to the AMD M780V chipset with ATI Radeon 3100 graphics. The $50 price increase makes this something of a tossup.
There are several similar Dell laptops listed at Best Buy for under $500; the best in terms of price and features is another outlet item, the Dell Inspiron I15-156B currently selling for $400. This one comes with an Intel Pentium T4200 (dual-core, 45nm, 1MB shared L2, 2.00GHz, 800MHz FSB), 3GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, GL40/GMA 4500M chipset, and Windows Vista Home Premium. Battery life is again listed as 2.5 hours.
An upgraded Dell Inspiron I1545-014B-WHT bumps the memory up to 3GB, hard drive 250GB, adds a webcam, and apparently doubles the battery capacity because battery life is listed as 4.5 hours. If you're concerned about battery life, this looks like a very good option for $500.
The final Best Buy laptop we want to mention is another Dell, this time a 14" Inspiron I1440-016B-BLK model. Once again the price is $500, and many of the specifications are similar to the above 15.6" Dell laptops. What's interesting is that this 14" laptop has more memory (4GB) and Vista Home Premium 64-bit along with a 320GB 5400RPM hard drive. The upgrades don't end there, as you also get Gigabit Ethernet and an LED backlit LCD. For the same price, why would anyone want to choose the larger Inspiron 15 listed above? The only question is battery life, which Best Buy doesn't specify. Dell's Inspiron 14 gives you the option of a 4-cell 37Whr, 6-cell 48Whr, or 9-cell 85Whr battery; the 4-cell battery will obviously weigh the least, but battery life would be very poor. Incidentally, putting together the same system at Dell's site ends up with a price closer to $600, though you do get the added flexibility of choosing your components (i.e. the battery). For $500, the basic Best Buy model has a very good feature set - and you can always add a larger battery in the future if necessary.
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garydale - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link
There's more to 64 bit than simply addressing more RAM. However, 64 bit drivers have been slow in coming for Windows so a lot of manufacturers pre-install the 32 bit version instead.However, this is strictly a Windows issue. Any one of these machines will run 64 bit Linux where there are 64 bit drivers for all of their hardware. Missing 64 bit drivers is strictly a Windows issue because manufacturers don't bother updating drivers for older hardware.
The other problem is getting a laptop without paying the Microsoft tax (Microsoft reportedly don't make it easy to return unused licenses).
Frankly, the thought of running Vista or Windows 7 on one of these machines is not appealing. The mobile versions of the processors always run slower than the desktop versions even without considering the slower hard drives. When you're running on lower end hardware, you want an OS that can take advantage of what the hardware can do without wasting cycles on unnecessary eye candy.
kpxgq - Thursday, August 6, 2009 - link
i run windows7 rc7100 on my netbook (extremely low spec: 1.6ghz atom, 1gb ram) and i highly reccomend it... it has improved my experience over windows xp... it has better memory management (loads my most used apps into ram), it has better hdd management (defrags in the background), the UI has better support for small fonts, it has also improved my battery life... it definately ran faster than when i had XP on it.. in fact its about as fast a when i had ubuntu notebook remix on itBikeDude - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link
[quote]There's not much sense in getting a 64-bit version of Home Basic[/quote]What are you trying to say here?
Is there no 64-bit version of Home Basic, or is there no sense in 64-bit Windows? What?
I'm looking for a cheap 64-bit laptop, because there is no sense in having 3GB+ memory and an OS that can barely handle 2GB (as each process is limited to 2GB user memory with such a configuration).
GaryJohnson - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link
I've been told that Vista install keys only care about version and market. So with that laptop, if you could obtain a 64 bit Vista Home Basic OEM disc, you could use it with the key on the laptop to reinstall/upgrade the OS to 64 bit.garydale - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link
That only gets you so far. Most Windows applications are only 32 bit. Software manufacturers for the most part don't want to maintain two versions, let alone ship with two install disks or a dual-mode installer. Instead they build just the 32 bit version, which will run on 64 bit systems - just not at full speed.If you want to run pure 64 bit, you need Linux. Linux apps have been running on 64 bit systems for more than a decade so the translation to 64 bit x86 wasn't a stretch.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link
My point is that Home Basic is the stripped down version of Vista. Why get a stripped down OS but then worry about getting 64-bit? If you want 64-bit you should be buying the full featured OS in the first place.FWIW, I have had OEM computers (from Gateway) where it came with 32-bit Vista and I used my Vista RTM 64-bit DVD with the same key and re-installed. Still, having used 32-bit and 64-bit Vista pretty much since their release, I have found no benefit to the 64-bit version unless you're running more than 4GB RAM.
KompuKare - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link
Having been playing around with VirtualBox for the last few days I've been annoyed that the E5200 in my Desktop doesn't support Intel VT (I know it's £50 / $66 CPU but similar priced AMD CPUs do have AMD-V).With Microsoft relying on hardware virtualization for the XP-Mode feature in Windows 7, Intel’s lack of VT in so many processors (even the Q8200 doesn’t have VT) is going to annoy a lot of people.
Anyway, I think Jarred should have mentioned VT/-V when comparing the AMD vs Intel based laptops. Even the Intel T4200s or T3400s don’t support Intel VT so not a single Intel-based laptop in the whole article features Intel VT…
A5 - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link
Many people seem to have an epic misunderstanding of what XP-mode is for. It is not for your Mom to run her 8 year-old version of Quicken...it's for businesses who do not want to or can not rewrite their XP-era corporate apps to work with Win7. Hence why it's only included in the Professional and Ultimate versions.The0ne - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link
It actually doesn't matter or seem that way to some users. If they have XP they will try to run their programs on it, if not just to see how it runs or performs. I've tried XP mode and it blows. You're better off with VirtualBox or VMWare with XP Pro. And while I didn't look hard at the XP you can download for XP Mode, it's appears to be crippled.If you're really desperate and have no other option then XP mode is ok, otherwise I don't recommend for use at all.
Calin - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link
Probably Jarred didn't even thought of the need of virtualisation on such a lowly computer. These being said, it might be interesting to know either way.