Laptops Arena

With this entire world crisis that has been going on, people really have to cut out some expenses if they still want to afford to refill the fridge. But what if you find yourself in such a situation where you have to buy a laptop and this was not on your monthly budgets. Let's see if we can help you as we will try to find the best laptop under $500.

$488 is the price of the Compaq CQ50 100EM SI40. The processor it uses is an AMD Sempron which has 2.0 GHz of speed; it has 1 GB of RAM and 120 GB of available disk space plus some 319 MB of shared graphics memory. This means it's a good laptop for basic and mainstream usage, even if you won't be able to play any new games with it. It will help you get along with regular tasks like surfing the internet, reading you e-mails or using the Microsoft Office suite. You will probably get your system with Windows Vista Home Basic operating system already installed but we think that 1 GB of RAM would help the laptop run even better if you had a version of Windows XP (Vista is normally used when you have at least 2 GB of RAM). Other features of this laptop are the 3 USB ports, the 5-in-1 card reader, 802.11b/g WLAN, high-speed 56K modem, VGA out, cable docking connector and HDMI connector. In addition to all this, you have a DVD burner that uses LightScribe technology which means you can create your own disc labels and you have good Altec Lansing speakers which produce a decent sound. The display is 15.4 inch long which is the regular size for the mainstream laptop. The laptop looks quite elegant with that combination of silver and black. All this, plus the 6-cell battery weight less than 3 kilos.

The Toshiba Equiium L350-10L has almost the same price as the Compaq CQ50 100EM SI40 except the features are a little bit different. First of all, this laptop looks way better. It has a matte silver lid which actually makes it look like a jewel. When you open the lid you will find silver palm rests and a black keyboard which seem to be in perfect combination. At 1.73 GHz of speed, this Toshiba has an Intel Pentium Dual Core T2370 processor plus some 2 GB of RAM. The hard disk has the same 120 GB capacity as the laptop presented above but the graphics card is an Intel GMA X1300 which is slightly better. You have an integrated webcam which does not produce such quality images but it will do better if you use it with Skype. If you look carefully, next to the camera you will notice a small hole.



That is where you will find the integrated microphone. The really cool thing about this laptop is that you have a set of multimedia control buttons right above the keyboard and this laptop is 17 inches long. This means it's a really good desktop replacement because of the size of the display. You also have the numerical pad just like you do at your regular computer keyboard. Other good features are the stereo speakers which are quite good for such a cheap laptop; you have a wireless card, modem and even High Definition Audio support. Even if you get your with lots of software preinstalled, you can perform a disk cleanup and get rid of all the application you're never going to use.



Another very good choice in our opinion would be the Acer Aspire 5315 which kind of looks like a toy but we love it because it's really cute. We would recommend this laptop especially to students that don't wish to spend too much money on a laptop and need it for basic tasking. Personally, I would buy one for my mother because all she needs a laptop for is to check her e-mail and play Spider Solitaire. It has a 15.4 inch display which is just the right size, not too big and not too small to enjoy a good movie. We think it's funny because once you open the lid everything is white, from the keyboard to the palm rest so it's not exactly business looking. The specs (as you can imagine) are not that great. This notebook has an Intel Celeron 450 processor and 1 GB of RAM so we don't exactly recommend you run many programs simultaneously because your laptop might just give you the blue screen of death.



The battery life is not that amazing either since it will last a bit over 2 hours, but for students in campus dorms, these laptops are awesome. Even if it looks like it is made of cheap plastic, we think this laptop is very young-looking and it is still very resistant. Too bad that if you hand are just a little bit dirty, this becomes very visible on the white surface of the keyboard and palm rest. Three USB ports should be enough for you and you are certainly going to be happy to know that this laptop also has a DVD-RW drive.



If you are still looking for the best laptop under $500, you can always go with the Dell Vostro 1000 which I personally find horrible because not only it is very boring (it is entirely black - looks like it's going to a funeral) but the AMD processor has a huge amount of heat output which will quickly kill your battery. Other laptop models you can look into are the Lenovo ThinkPad R61e, the Gateway T-6815, the Compaq C700T or, if you like, you can check out some netbooks which are actually mini notebooks (mini because the size of the display varies from 8.9 inch to a maximum 12 inch) that do not have powerful components but due to their design, they are easier to carry around because they are compact and light. These mini notebook can also be found at about $300 - $400 but if you looking to use them at home, as your primary computer, they are definitely not recommended for purchase  because their components are very weak and except for web-browsing and document reading and editing, you can't do pretty much anything else with them.