Laptops Arena

The laptops are getting more and more popular these days. They are capable of doing all of the things that a desktop computer does, but they are much smaller, lighter and portable. So you can take it wherever you want and take care of all your business while you are traveling, or while you are anywhere else rather than your home of office. But not only business men are buying laptops, and these days they are bought by all sort of users such as teenagers, students, and people of all ages and all professions. And if they are still going this way, in a few years there will be more laptops than personal computers.
<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
There are many companies that are producing  notebooks, and here are the best of them: Hewlett Packard, Dell, Acer, Toshiba and Lenovo. Dell is a multinational company that operates in many countries all over the world, and which  has its headquarters in Round Rock, Texas. It was founded in 1984 by Michael Dell, and for quite a long time (in the 80’s and 90’s) it was the best producer of computers in the world. Today it is not so bad either, and it is the third company in the world. It produces all sort of electronic devices, but today we are going to focus just on the laptop reviews.


And we’ll choose one of the cheap Dell laptops, the Inspiron 15 which comes at a price of just 379 dollars. It is a nice and simple budget laptop, with a display screen of 15.6 inch. It is available in different colors, and you can even choose from over 200 artist designs with Design Studio. Its processor is a basic Intel ® Celeron ® 900 processor with 1 MB cache / 2.20 GHz / 800Mhz  FSB and the RAM memory is 2 GB of DDR 2. the optical drive is a 8 X CD / DVD Burner ( Dual Layer DVD + / - R Drive) while the hard drive has a capacity of 160 GB and a speed of 5400 rpm. The video card is an Intel  Graphics Media Accelerator X 4500 High Definition and this is about all. Since it is not a very expensive laptop it doesn’t offer too many features. Of course besides all the things that we mentioned it also has both wireless and Ethernet connectivity for easy access to the internet, a full size keyboard, a touchpad device and some of the ports you might need (audio ports, USB ports etc).


So here was an example of a cheap Dell laptop. In case you too own this model, we invite you to tell us more about it, and if you are happy with the way it works or would you rather prefer spending more money and buying a more powerful laptop?

The laptops are getting more and more popular these days. They are capable of doing all of the things that a desktop computer does, but they are much smaller, lighter and portable. So you can take it wherever you want and take care of all your business while you are traveling, or while you are anywhere else rather than your home of office. But not only business men are buying laptops, and these days they are bought by all sort of users such as teenagers, students, and people of all ages and all professions. And if they are still going this way, in a few years there will be more laptops than personal computers.
<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
Usually all the notebooks have the same shape, but they can also differ from one another by color. There are all sorts of colors for laptops, such as: black, white, brown, blue, red, yellow or even pink. And there are also many producers, and some of the bests are: Hewlett Packard, Acer, Asus, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, Fujitsu, MSI and Apple. But all the technologies of a laptop come at a price, at a bigger one compared to a desktop computer with the same features.


So in case you don’t have enough money and you are looking for a cheap laptop, then you can choose a netbook. A netbook is very similar to a laptop, only that it is even smaller. It usually has a display screen of just 10 inch, a small weight and a big battery life. So the netbooks are even more portable than the regular laptops. There are many models of netbooks on the market, and all the producers have at least one of them in the offer. Today we’ll discuss about one from Hewlett Packard, which is the largest seller of personal computers in the world. So you can be sure that the products from this company are really good and reliable.

For today we’ll choose the HP Mini - Notebook 110 - 1134 CL which has a price on geeks.com of just 280 dollars. It has a display screen of 10.1 inch, a Bright View LED – Backlit display with a resolution of 1024 x 600. So it may not be suited for watching movies in High Definition, but it can be just great for basic activities such as browsing the internet or writing documents. Its processor is the Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHz and the RAM memory is 1 GB DDR 2 RAM (which can be expanded up to 2 GB). The hard drive is quite large for such a small laptop, and has a capacity of 160 GB and a speed of 5400 rpm. Like any other netbook it doesn’t have an optical drive, and the graphics card is an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 w with up to 128 MB video memory. It also has integrated High Definition audio built in stereo speakers and both wireless and Ethernet connectivity for easy access to the internet.


But this is not all…it also has a built in webcam with microphone and a 5 in 1 media card reader (with support for Secure Digital (SD), MultiMediaCard (MMC) , Memory Stick (MS) , Memory Stick PRO (MS PRO) and xD Picture card (xD). After all it is quite a really good laptop, that offers attractive features for the basic activities, for a very small price.

When you are on the market looking for a cheap notebook computer, maybe you would like to take a look at the new mini notebook released by MSI – the Wind U160. At a price of $429 for the unit reviewed, this cheap notebook computer is surely a great choice not only when you are looking to save some money, but it is ideal when you are on the market searching for a portable unit which is easy to carry around no matter where you travel.
<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
And the MSI Wind U160 is definitely something portable since it comes with 10.24 x 7.09 x 0.74 inches in dimensions and 2.4 pounds in weight. This unit comes with the most common choice for processors when it comes to mini notebooks: an Intel Atom. The unit is based on a 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N450 processor and 1 GB of RAM. The graphics card is the integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 and the total storage capacity of the hard drive is 250 GB. The unit is shipped with the 32 bit version of the Windows 7 Starter Edition operating system. MSI says that the battery life will keep this cheap notebook computer on for no less than 15 hours. Stick with us to learn if that information is accurate. In the mean time, let me tell you that this portable notebook comes with a 10.1 inch display that comes at a native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels.

If we were to compare this display with other similarly sized and priced notebooks, we have to admit that the MSI Wind is below the category average. There is some backlight bleeding and this is not good news for any notebook display. Since the screen is covered in a glossy coating, the colors appear sharper and more vibrating, making the image to appear as if it was of a superior quality. The MSI Wind U160 does not offer much when it comes to the selection of ports and connections but it does come with a couple of ports that could come in handy at a certain point. The laptop is host to 3 USB ports, one SDHC media card reader, the Ethernet port, a Kensington lock slot, one VGA out and the regular headphones out and microphone in jacks.



The battery performance is an extremely important chapter when it comes to 10.1 inch notebook that are supposed to stay on for hours of long continuous usage since they are not designed to let you down in your moments of need. Like we said at the beginning of the article, MSI says that the Wind U160 can stay on for 15 continuous hours on a full charge. Of course, that would be a dream come true for many people. During the performed battery drain test, the Wind U160 manages to stay on for 8 hours and 21 minutes which is still a great performance level when we consider the fact that there are lot of mini laptop that cannot reach the 8 hour performance.

When you are on the market looking for cheap laptops, you should know that if you really want to save some money, you have to keep in mind that refurbished models are a great way to save some money since they come with quite a big price difference compared to the brand new models. Another thing that you must always remember is that cheap laptop generally come with rather weak components so don’t expect to buy powerful units if you are not willing to spend more than $500.
<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->
But if it’s cheap laptops what the public wants, it’s cheap laptops what the public gets and we are going to show some examples of very affordable systems. www.geeks.com is a great website that provides you with a lot of possibilities for you to choose from and get the laptop that suit you best at a price that is definitely not going to make a hole in your budget. The first such example is that of a very good netbook, the Lenovo IdeaPad S10.

This mini laptop has a display that measures 10.1 inches in diagonal and it comes at a native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. The processor of this unit is the 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 and 1 GB of RAM with the possibility to extend it to a maximum 2 GB. The total storage capacity of the hard drive is 160 GB. There is no optical drive attached to the unit since this has to be sacrificed in order to get a thin and light system. The graphics card is the integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. This mini laptop includes the Ericsson 3G Broadband Modem which can be used only when you have a SIM card plus a suitable data plan. The included media card reader supports Secure Digital, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro and MultiMedia Card formats. As for the selection of ports and features, this laptop offers 2 USB ports, one Ethernet jack, a VGA out and the regular headphones out and microphone in jacks.  The preinstalled operating system that is shipped with this unit is Windows XP Home.



If you are looking for a notebook which is just slight bigger and more powerful, for $650 you can buy the Sony VAIO VGN-NW240F/S laptop that comes with a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 processor and 4 GB of RAM with the possibility to extend to a maximum 8 GB of RAM. The total storage capacity of the hard drive is 320 GB, quite enough to make this laptop even your primary computer. The graphics card is the integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 45. Other features that may determine you to buy this laptop are the 15.5 inch display with a native resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels or the included Motion Eye webcam with an integrated microphone. The unit will be shipped with the 64 bit version of the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system. As for the selection of ports and features, this unit comes with 3 USB ports, one Ethernet port, a HDMI port, a VGA out, a FireWire port and the regular headphones out and microphone in jacks.

A cheap notebook is no longer a thing of the past. Customers are more and more oriented towards saving money and so they always try to find the best deals, such as notebook discount, coupons that offer special prices or holiday promotions when laptops are much cheaper. We are going to give you cheap notebook examples as some models are cheap right from the beginning so you don’t have to go haunting for special offers and discounts.

<-300x250 Medium Rectangle - center->

The Gateway EC1430u is one very good choice as it has a starting price of $550. The unit has a 1.3 GHz Intel Pentium SU 4100 processor and 3 GB of RAM. The hard drive can store up to 320 GB and so far, the specs are pretty good for a budget laptop. Too bad that the graphics card is the weak integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500 MHD. The unit will most likely come with the preinstalled version of the 64 bit Windows 7 Home Premium.

For less than $600, you can buy the Acer Aspire 5740-6378, a 15.6 inch budget notebook which has quite good performance considering its price tag. The unit is powered by a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 15-430M processor and 4 GB of RAM. This combination between RAM and CPU is going to provide great system speed and opportunity of running multiple task at the same time without having to wait around too long to switch between tabs and windows.

The storage capacity of the hard drive is 320 GB and the graphics card is the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with 1 GB of video memory. We would have never imagined that a notebook this cheap would come with components that good inside. The 15.6 inch display has a native resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and it comes with an integrated DVD burner and the 64 bit version of the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system preinstalled.

$799 is the price of the Asus UL30A-A1, a cheap notebook which is remarkable because of its keyboard which is very similar to that of the Apple MacBook laptop. The Asus UL30A-A1 runs on a 1.3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ULV SU7300 processor and 4 GB of RAM. To our surprise, even if the display measures only 13.1 inches in diagonal, the native resolution of the screen is 1366 x 768 pixels, the same as the one on the 15.6 inch Acer Aspire described above. The storage capacity of the hard disk has reached 500 GB which means you don’t have to worry about running out of free disk space too soon. Hopefully you won’t because there is no included optical drive on this ultra portable notebook.

The graphics card is the Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500 MHD and the unit will come with the 32 bit version of the Windows Vista Home Premium operating system preinstalled. You could also look into the Acer Aspire AS1410 which is available for a starting price of $450 and it has a 1.2 GHz Intel Celeron SU 2300 processor, 2 GB of RAM, a 160 GB hard drive and the Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500 MHD.