Smart Buying
Lots of Laptop for a Little Money
These computers handle entertainment as well as the routine stuff.
By Jeff Bertolucci, Contributing Writer
From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, September 2006
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Expect a slew of features for your grand. Wireless networking is essential. If you plan to edit and print digital photos, a memory-card slot is handy for transferring pictures directly from the card to the laptop. You can transfer photos with a USB cable, or wirelessly via Bluetooth if your laptop and camera are so equipped. Most laptops have at least two to four USB ports for hooking up peripherals. In addition, a FireWire port is convenient for transferring movies from a digital video camera directly to the computer.
If much of your computing time is spent far from an electrical outlet, a powerful battery is a must. Some $1,000 models run from three to four hours on a single charge, whereas others lose juice after an hour or so. We found considerable variation here -- 1.5 hours for Toshiba's basic battery versus four hours for Dell's nine-cell -- so be sure to read the battery specifications carefully.
Power-management tools are important, too. Most laptops automatically fall into an energy-saving sleep mode after a few minutes of inactivity, but some models have manual controls, such as HP's on/off button, for turning off wireless networking.
What's missing?
Roam the aisles of your local tech retailer and you'll find plenty of laptops in the $1,000 to $2,000 range. What's the trade-off if you buy a cheaper machine? As you'd expect, the pricier models typically have bigger and brighter screens, better graphics, more memory and a faster processor. For instance, Hewlett-Packard's dv8000t series of laptops, which start at $1,050, combine 17-inch displays with Intel's Core Duo chip, a combo you won't find on HP models less than $1,000.
Pricier laptops may also include extras, such as a built-in TV tuner for watching your favorite shows. And if you want a super-secure system with, say, a biometric fingerprint reader that keeps others from accessing your data if your machine is ever lost or stolen, you'll pay more than $1,000.
If you spend less than $800 or so, you risk buyers' regret. For instance, Dell often advertises $500 laptops. But you may have to pay extra to upgrade from 256MB to 512MB of RAM, and a 40-gigabyte (GB) hard drive is a tad small for storing photos, music and programs. By comparison, the models we tested have drives of at least 60GB.
Oh, and one more thing: When you do finally dump the desktop, remember to keep your back straight and lift with your legs.