Budget Laptop Roundup

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All of these notebooks retail for under $800, except for the Apple MacBook, and all are available as of this writing. Pricing in the portable computing market is volatile — most manufacturers release new models on a quarterly basis, often whether there are changes in hardware components or not. These particular models will be readily available at least through the middle to end of August. So, they are truly back-to-school laptops, and if you want one for that or any other purpose, I suggest you buy one ASAP.

If I could, I would have listed only laptops based on Intel’s new Centrino 2 technology. However, most of those won’t hit the market until the same middle-to-late August timeframe. Also, because the new technology will cost more early on, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to buy Centrino 2 laptops for the same price range with the features of the models I discuss here. Check out what the new Managing Editor of Tom’s Hardware, Chris Angelini, has to say about Centrino 2 .

While all of these laptops are fine for standard school use, they’re not super-powered gaming machines or heavy duty graphics workstations. If you want something like that, you’ll need to focus on higher-end, super-large, super-heavy notebooks from the likes of Dell, Alienware, Toshiba and the myriad smaller scale manufacturers and vendors out there.

Note that, at least for budget notebooks, vendors report battery information in different ways. Some list the number of cells in a battery such as IBM 02K6928 Battery, IBM 02K6620 Battery, IBM 02K7039 Battery, IBM ThinkPad X60 Battery, IBM FRU 92P1167 Battery, IBM ThinkPad Z60t Battery, IBM ThinkPad Z61t Battery, IBM 40Y6793 Battery, IBM FRU 92P1125 Battery, IBM FRU 92P1121 Battery, while others provide battery capacity numbers in milliamp hours (mAh). Though this is not a hard and fast rule, more cells or more capacity equal longer battery life for notebooks in the same hardware component class. Fortunately, the notebooks in this roundup are very similar in their hardware components; for example, each comes with a read/write optical CD/DVD drive.

So, let’s take a look at the six budget laptops I’m recommending for those going back to school this fall. I’ve included specific model numbers and links where available. There were no specific model numbers for the Dell or Apple models, but there are links for these. If you’re hitting this article after mid-August and a specific link doesn’t work any more, try going to the company’s home page and surfing for a similar model.

You’ve probably already noticed the similarity of these six laptops: even the Apple MacBook has a lot of the same hardware components as the other models. Except for the MacBook, all of the computers are also similarly priced. So what does the extra you pay for the MacBook buy you? Well, there might still be a bit of Apple snobbery appeal in the price, but one of the main benefits of Apple products is the company’s strong customer service reputation. No other company scores as high as Apple in this area in surveys by reliable, well respected consumer-oriented research organizations.

Does this mean that Apple always provides great service, or that other companies never do it right? No way. Right now, as an iPhone owner, I’m following a very interesting set of forum threads that are seriously questioning the ability of the new iTunes-iPhone OS 2.0 to handle synchronization between the iPhone and Microsoft’s Outlook email, calendar and contacts software — and Apple’s attitude about fixing the problem. And, I have to say that I’ve had very good service from the other manufacturers whose laptops I’ve covered here.

I recommend that you select your back to school laptop based on your own interests and needs. If performance is your main concern, go for the laptops with the fastest components. Here, your choice is pretty much limited to CPU speed, though the differences in CPU performance among the laptops presented here are going to be quite minimal anyway.

If you’re a serious, work-oriented player, go for the Vista Business operating system. If you want to play or mix work and play, Vista Home Premium or Ultimate are for you.

If you’re concerned about running out of disk space with all the new and exciting things you can store on your laptop these days, then go for the biggest hard disk. But remember that the more capacity you have, the more content you have to back up. So, think about getting an external drive and either using the notebook’s operating system itself to backup your notebook, or find some software and maybe even an online backup service to save all that good stuff to another place.

If you’re a design hound, then select from the variety of styles and colors available for at least some of the notebooks presented here. From the racing stripes and rainbow of colors available for the Inspiron 1525, to the hot pink and electric blue colors Sony has dreamed up for its Vaio models, there’s plenty for you to choose from.

Finally, don’t think you have to buy the configurations in this article. As you may have noticed if you surfed to some of the company site links above, they offer a lot of configuration options, both more and less expensive. Fiddle around a bit to see what might be best for you.

Whatever you do, buy that laptop now and avoid the late August and early September rush...