Laptops Arena

Reevoo’s blog, Decide What to Buy, published the names and prices for the best laptop computers under 300 Pound Sterling, which includes models ranging between $200 and $500, after the conversion at the time of writing.

Reevoo is a free online service that helps you decide what to buy, depending on your needs, prices and customers’ ratings. The site works with the most popular stores including PC World, Woolworths, Currys, Dixons and Carphone Warehouse, where people are asked to rate their new acquisitions after purchase.
People search first for the cheapest products and then they look at other factors, such as brand popularity and features, in order to make the final decision.

The top 5 best very cheap laptops under $500 is:
<-125x125 Button - right->The most expensive from all the 5 laptop models is Compaq CQ50 100EM SI40, available at £300, or $488.
It runs with an AMD Sempron processor of 2GHz speeds, with the Windows Vista Home Basic 32-bit operating system pre-installed, featuring the Service Pack 1. In addition, Compaq CQ50 100EM SI40 integrates 1GB system memory, 120GB hard drive storage, a DVD burner with LightScribe technology for creating disc labels, a 5-in-1 card reader, high-speed 56K modem, 802.11b/g WLAN, 3 USB ports, HDMI connector, VGA, cable docking connector, 3D Sound Blaster Pro sound card for great audio quality via the built-in Altec Lansing speakers, and 319MB shared graphics memory.
The laptop has a 6-cell Li-Ion battery type and sports a 15.4-inch High Definition BrightView display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, in a system weighting just 2.93Kg.

At the same price is the Toshiba Equium L350-10L, a stylish laptop with a metallic finish, powered by an Intel Pentium Dual Core T2370 processor of 1.73GHz speeds, and featuring 2GB memory, 120GB hard drive capacity, DVD burner, the Intel GMA X1300 graphics chipset with up to 358MB shared memory, built-in web camera with microphone, Wi-Fi, WLAN, modem, stereo speakers, Kensington Cable Lock slot, Multimedia Bar with 6 feather-touch Easy Keys, High Definition Audio support, and lots of software pre-installed.
Toshiba Equium L350-10L sports a 17-inch TruBrite TFT display with high brightness level and a resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels.

Another laptop available at this price is Packard Bell MX37 T003, a 15.4-inch lightweight computer at 2.8Kg, bringing the Windows Vista Home Basic user-friendly operating system, a 1.73GHz Intel Celeron dual-core processor, 1GB system memory, DVD burner, SiS Mirage M672 integrated graphics chipset, the Realtek ALC861 sound chipset, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 4 USB ports, built-in web camera for video conferences, and 1280 x 800 display resolution with the Diamondview technology.
In addition, the Packard Bell EasyNote MX37 notebook comes with a big package of software pre-loaded for security, accessibility and productivity.

We’ve encountered Advent laptops before, when we wrote about the best rated computer laptops, and it was about the Advent 4211, which seems to be not only in the top 5 best rated computer laptops abut also in Reevoo’s top 5 very cheap laptops under $500. It costs about £230, meaning $374, and comes with Wndows XP Home Edition operating system pre-installed. Inside we find 80GB storage space, Bluetooth, no optical drive, 1GB memory, Wi-Fi module, a 1.6GHz single-core Intel N270 processor, integrated Intel graphics chipset, and all these weighting just 1.1Kg.

The laptop has a very small form factor with a 10-inch TFT display featuring 1024 x 600 pixels. Other components include a built-in web camera, a 4-in-1 card reader, and external monitor connectivity.
Asus EEE PC 4GB INT continues to be the most popular among mini laptop computers and Reevoo found it at £170, or $276. It has a high rating on all customer ratings websites because it is optimized for mobile performance with latest technologies.

This 7-inch version of the Eee PC features 512MB system memory, an Intel Celeron processor, Linux operating system, Windows XP support, Ethernet connectivity, WLAN, 4GB Solid State Drive storage, built-in web camera, High Definition audio with stereo speakers and microphone, and a 4-cell battery for up to 3.5 hours of continuous use.

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By combining experts’ reviews with users’ ratings we can create interesting and informative product tops like the one I’ll present to you today and which is called Best Rated Computer Laptops. It’s not like a top 10 because instead of showing you a fixed number of models, we have a list with 5 laptop models picked from each of the top 5 brands with the highest ratings on 4 reviews websites - CNET, Epinions, reevoo, and alaTest.

The first in alaTest’s top is Asus Eee PC 900, a 9-inch model with a screen large enough for watching videos and work on the go, long battery life, multi-touch trackpad compatible with Windows XP, while the bad aspects include small storage capacity, no 3G, too small keyboard for some, and no optical drive among others.
Reevoo has the Asus X51RL T2310 in the top 5 brands, a 10-rated laptop recommended by all reviewers for its long battery life, durability, design, performance and value for money.
ASUS Eee PC 4G on Epinions scored 5 stars for its overall design and ultra-portability, while the bad aspects are related to the keyboard size, monitor casing getting hot too quickly, too small memory and no disk drive. I’d like to ask these guys what did they expect from a $350 laptop?!
On CNET, the same laptop has a Very Good rating for having Windows XP installed for the same price as Linux, while the Bad includes low hard drive space and low screen resolution. Still, it is considered one of the best rated computer laptops worldwide.



Sony Vaio VGN AR11S from reevoo has a 17-inch display, long battery life, several software utilities pre-installed, and no bad reviews yet.
Acer Aspire One has a score of 99 out of 100 and people like it because it is elegant, in a slim form factor, with a large keyboard, and at an affordable price. Some say it’s limited in RAM memory, battery life and helpful features such as the Bluetooth.
On Epinions, the same laptop is among best rated with maximum of 5 stars accumulated for the price, performance, design, web camera and microphone. Some didn’t like the fact that it has no Bluetooth, but small keyboard and short battery life.



One of the lightest and thinnest laptop models available on the market is the Lenovo ThinkPad X300. In addition to these main positive aspects it provides a built-in DVD burner, WWAN, GPS and wireless USB connectivity. The thing that seems to bother many on alaTest is the price of about $1,830, which is a bit high.

Lenovo ThinkPad T61 has a lower price of $750 for having fewer features, but its durable design and long battery life allowed it to score 5 stars on sites like Epinions.

From HP, the Compaq Presario V4332EA 15.4-inch laptop is one of the few highly recommended models on reevoo, while on Epinions you can find the HP Pavilion dv6000z with 5 stars, lowest price displayed of $1099, and some Cons including short battery life, small hard drive and overheating.
HP Pavilion dv5-1000us entertainment system was reviewed on CNET and there people liked the expandable RAM memory which reaches 8GB, its design line, high processing speed, wireless draft N support and others. What they liked less includes the material used for building the housing on the exterior. It attracts fingerprints. Besides this, it is not that easy to use and users need a better user guide in order to learn how to access all its features.



From Apple there is the MacBook 2008 Edition, a great portable computing system with fast operating speed, large hard drive, high-quality built-in web camera for video conferences, as well as many security layers. There are no negative reviews, just that it seems a bit pricey for some on CNET.
Apple MacBook Air, the thinnest notebook, has 158 user reviews on alaTest and 81 expert reviews. From what I read there, it is considered too expensive for having a non-replaceable battery, small storage on Solid State Drive, limited connectivity, and slower operating speed compared to other laptops from the same category.

Advent appears in the top 5 best rated computer laptops on both reevoo and alaTest, but with different models. While Advent 4211 is appreciated for screen quality and value for money, and disliked for not having 3G connectivity and a longer battery life, the Advent 8109 on reevoo has a score of 10 for all categories: size/weight, design, value for money, battery life and performance.



I have to recognize I don’t know much about Everex products’ quality but after taking a look at the reviews on Epinions and CNET, I can say that the Everex StepNote SA2053T has a good design at under 4 lbs, costs under $600, but supports maximum 2GB of RAM memory and has no web camera. Let’s say it’s a mid-level laptop. On CNET, Everex StepNote XT5000T shows that users are satisfied for the graphics quality and all other stuff, excepting the fact that it overheats from time to time and the battery life tends to shorten.



What brand do you think is missing from the picture till now? – Toshiba probably, as it scored 10 on reevoo with the Toshiba Satellite Pro L40-15A and almost 5 stars on CNET with the Toshiba Satellite M65-S809 model. The latter has a noisy hard disk, low sound, and gets hot quickly, these in addition to being kinda heavy. You might like at it the display quality and the overall design.

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Who doesn’t want to find super offers and high discounts when searching for buying a new laptop computer? –Everybody, but as these offers are usually limited and it’s kinda hard to discover them among so many stores and brands, many decide to go for some used cheap laptops. Sometimes, when you don’t have much money at your disposal, it is a good idea, but sometimes not. Let’s see why!
First of all, you know that second hand products sold by amateurs are not trustful and if you don’t know that seller’s business very well and the clients, you might get into a big mistake. The used laptops for sale could come with hardware problems if they are not already damaged. The best thing to do is begin searching for a highly rated store that provides used cheap laptops after testing them.
Since you are online now and reading this article, I’ll propose you some web sites focused on this type of business, and we’ll see what they have to offer and why would we choose this method.

One of the first websites that comes up when searching for this stuff is usedlaptops. They advertise themselves as providers of quality used cheap laptops having started this activity 12 years ago, in 1996, and having sold over 20,000 notebooks to both customers and companies.

Usedlaptops offers also service support for the best brands on the market such as Dell, IBM, Toshiba, Compaq and HP. The company’s specialists test all the systems at their arrival and only the ones in the best state are kept and sold to you together with a 90-days warranty. They also provide the laptops with a pre-installed Microsoft operating system, OpenOffice suite for document management, AdAware SE data security software, and the AVG AntiVirus.
You can call them and ask for assistance in case you don’t need what to buy or you may browse through the on-site menus according to your preferred specifications, starting with the price range or brand and ending with hardware components.



To give you an example of used cheap laptop, I’ve search between the $150-$350 price range and found only one model - IBM Thinkpad T23 available at just $350. Now let’s see if the model is worth buying. We’ll take a look at the specifications. Here we have a 1.13GHz processor, 2 card slots, 30GB hard drive capacity, 256MB RAM expandable up to 1GB, enough to run Windows XP, DVD drive, 16MB video memory, 2 built-in speakers, modem, S-Video Out, external monitor connectivity, PS/2 port, mic jack, headphone jack, 2 USB ports, and a Li-Ion battery which we can assume about it lasts up to 2 hours at most.
It is a 14.1-inch laptop with Active Matrix Color display technology and the entire system measures 13 x 10.7 x 1.8 inches at 7.6 lbs.

It’s clear what you could use it for. You can process documents, create presentations, store music, movies and software, as well as play games not including graphics-demanding ones.
Another example is http://www.laptopoutlet.com LaptopOutlet where the cheapest used laptop for sale is Compaq Armada 7800 available at a price of $259 with a 13.3-inch TFT Active Matrix display having a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, an Intel Mobile Pentium II processor of 366Mhz speed, 14GB hard disk, 256MB SDRAM or 512MB, a 12x CD drive, modem, Ethernet, 16-bit Stereo Sound Blaster Pro support, built-in speaker with mic, external monitor connectivity, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCMCIA PCMCIA, USB port, the Windows 98 Second Edition operating system pre-installed and 6 months warranty.
The Laptop Outlet checks all the systems to see if they are fully functional, and sometimes specific parts are replaced.

Everything sounds fine if you are expecting old laptop models at these low prices, but you should never forget one thing – always check for the store’s rating on specialized websites where real customers leave their impression about the experience with the stores they bought things from. One such website is ResellerRatings, and if you check these 2 websites I gave you as examples you’ll find out that the second one has bad ratings while the first one is not even listed. People complain about the customer service who is not instructed enough, and about the overall service. Laptops came already damaged. So, to not waste your time anymore you should search for some trustful stores directly on this ratings provider’s search engine.

With the help of this free online service I managed to check and then avoid some scams claiming to be available at prices under $200, and have found the cheapest laptop called V000020090 15.0" XGA TFT LCD. To be sincere, I have no idea what brand is this, but it costs only $295. On the store’s site there’s no product specification list or descriptive pictures. After doing some extra research I found out that it is just a laptop part from Toshiba, so finally I got rid of another scam, and I can move forward to the other product I left my eyes on earlier, the Lenovo ThinkPad X40. These used cheap laptops are available at only $349.99, but to check and see if it may be real, I’ll find out what’s the price for a new model.
It costs $585 and for a used 12.1-inch laptop from Lenovo the half price mentioned earlier is justified.

Coming with a warranty of 60 days, the used model features a Pentium M 1.2GHz low voltage processor, a weight of 3.1 lbs, built-in speaker and mic, WLAN antenna, the TPM hardware-based encryption security, 512MB DDR SDRAM memory, card reader, 40GB hard disk, Intel Extreme Graphics 2 chipset, fax/modem, Ethernet, and the Microsoft Windows XP Professional operating system pre-installed.



The search for cheap used laptops took about 20 minutes or so, but in order to find the best solution according to your own criteria you’d surely need more time to spend online. Other similar websites include Epinions and reevoo.
Their databases are very large and you can find anything there but how good these used cheap laptops are? –It never knows… My advice? –Get an Eee PC!

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What can i say? It’s amazing how far display technologies designed for laptop computers have been evolving since 1976, when the first notebook was prototyped. The one who invented the laptop had to start with a monochrome screen with a very low resolution, but today we have plenty of sizes and features we can choose from.
When I talk about the size I am referring at the screen resolution and diagonal, which make the difference between a classic screen and a wide one, but it also specifies the details level of the image produced.

First we’ll see which are the laptop screen resolutions and then two categories of display technologies used today by the most popular manufacturers.

The abbreviation letters are a shortcut for No. of Pixels on Horizontal x No. of Pixels on Vertical, and all resolutions are derived from the Extended Graphics Array standard, known as XGA, which was introduced back in 1990 by http://www.ibm.com IBM, representing 1024 x 768 pixels.

Super eXtended Graphics Array display standard, or SXGA, has either 1280 x 960 pixels or 1280 x 1024 pixels, the latter displaying a 5:4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio aspect ratio.

Ultra eXtended Graphics Array, also called UXGA, is the shortcut for 1600 x 1200 pixels. It is used in 15-inch 4:3 laptop screens and some 14-inch models.

The highest resolution for a laptop monitor is Quad eXtended Graphics Array, in short QXGA, which has 2048 x 1536 pixels at 4:3 aspect ratio. It is 4 times the XGA and there exists a 15-inch panel for laptops, produced by IDTech, but it isn’t provided yet as a standard option.

Other laptop display resolutions are: WXGA (1280 x 800 pixels), WXGA+ (1440 x 900 pixels), WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050 pixels), WUXGA (1920 x 1200 pixels), all widescreens and all the most popular.



WXGA refers at Wide XGA, 1280 × 800 pixel resolution with an aspect ratio of 16:10.
Acer introduced recently the 2 unconventional laptop displays integrated in the Acer Gemstone Blue models, featuring High Definition 1920 x 1080 resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio.

These days you can choose from various sizes. The first Eee PC model features a 7-inch display, the classic dimensions is of 15 inches, but if you are a professional you need a 17-inch widescreen.

As you’ve probably already noticed, all these LCD monitors are not perfect. As CRTs produce eye fatigue after an hour of working at the computer, the image on an LCD is never perfect. For this reason the top screen manufacturers and designers come up with new advanced display technologies to enhance the brightness in low light conditions, or to produce natural and vivid colors.

There are 2 display technology categories i want to tell you about: one describing what the display is made of, while the other names the technology used to enhance the image display.
Most of the laptop screens on the market are TFT LCDs, which comes from thin film transistor liquid crystal display.
This type is an active matrix liquid crystal display using thin film transistor technology. Another one is the Transreflective Liquid Crystal Display that reflects the sunlight, increasing or decreasing this way the screen’s light. This is better than the already common TFT LCDs because you won’t need to adjust brightness manually. When there is a near light source it doesn’t matter how strong it is, the backlight coming from the side or back of the display compensating for this automatically.

OLED display technology referrs at organic light-emitting diode and consists of a light-emitting diode with the emissive electroluminescent layer formed by a film of organic compounds. OLED consumes less power than the other existent displays and doesn’t need backlight. One negative aspect is the short life time, due to the fast degradation of the compounding materials.

Samsung has a laptop prototype with an AMOLED display. This active-matrix OLED uses a thin film transistor backplane for switching individual pixels on or off, leading to higher resolution and larger display sizes.
Samsung’s AMOLED has a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels and 20% better contrast ratio compared to LCDs.
Flexible displays are a cool concept and they could be implemented in laptop computers as folding displays.

The other category is larger and includes all the display technologies used by various manufacturers to enhance the viewing experience.
Just to enumerate a few we can remember Acer’s CineCrystal, Asus’ Color Shine display, Averatec AveraBrite, Benq’s UltraVivid Technology with Display Brilliance Enhancement Film, Compaq BrightView technology, Dell DirectVue display, Fujitsu-Siemens Crystal View LED wide display, Gigabyte Anti-Glare technology, HP mercury-free Illumi-Lite LED displays, Lenovo VibrantView, Sony XBRITE-HiColor technology, MSI Amazing Crystal Vision TFT LCD display, Zepto Zero Bright Dot display technology, and Zepto UltraCrisp screen technology.



A display enhancement technology such as the Acer’s CineCrystal delivers high definition imaging, 16:9 aspect ratio, and 14% larger viewing area compared to the other 15.4-inch screens.
Asus has the Color Shine, Colour Shine and Crystal Shine technologies used in notebooks with high-gloss anti-reflexive screens. A thin film layer laminated is the polarizer placed on the outermost layer of the glass, and its function is to filter light waves produced by the screen, to generate an image. Asus’ polarizer has a smooth chemically-treated surface that reduces ambient light reflection by absorbing most of the external light instead of diffusing it at different angles. Other notebooks have a matte surface polarizer with anti-glare properties, diffusing the light at different angles, reducing this way the intensity of the light reflected to the user’s eye. This causes distorted images, lower contrast ratio and less vivid colors among other things. Asus’s technology produces crisper images, brilliant colors, sharp contrast, wider viewing angles, reducing eye fatigue.

AveraBrite from Averatec is described as a glossy screen coating that should provide great imaging in any light conditions but it seems that it’is not that effective as it is not overly reflective.
Benq’s UltraVivid technology with Display Brilliance Enhancement Film enables 200 nits brightness for the screen coated with a low-reflectivity layer.
Dell’s DirectVue raises brightness level even more, reaching 500 nits, thanks to the backlight technology.
HP mercury-free Illumi-Lite LED displays are optional and feature lighter weight and energy efficiency.
The company plans to remove mercury from its displays until 2010.

Sony XBRITE-HiColor technology is characterized by deeper blacks and brighter whites. It features vivid colors, sharper images, a glare filter and anti-reflective coating.

These are some examples to give you a bigger picture of what the top companies are trying to do, and we can’t finish our story without discussing about how to take care of these LCD displays, which the more sophisticated are becoming, the more sensitive they are, requiring special attention during cleaning.
Cleaning LCD monitors is simple if you respect some basic rules. In any store you have to look for those sets containing a microfiber cloth and a gel spray specially designed for cleaning laptop computer screens.



Clean the LCD for about 1 minute, until the gel gets dry, and if the surface is larger, than remember to clean only with the dry cloth surface, never use the dirty and wet parts. You could check the user’s manual for the recommended cleaning method in case your LCD model is let’s say, more special.
One specific characteristic of these cleaning kits is that they don’t contain ammonia or alcohol while the cloth has anti static properties, so they don’t leave tiny pieces of material behind and do not attract the dust in the air while touching the surface.

(Sources ScreenTek;
Wikipedia)

Laptop definition: Also called notebooks, laptops are portable computers with integrated monitors, powered by rechargeable batteries. You will say “But that’s not all! They are lightweight, small and you have to close the lid to be able to carry it.” Sorry to disappoint you, but as you will see in a few moments, laptops weren’t always like that; the small dimension and light weight were not actually standards.

Laptop Computer Parts

Inside, most laptop computers integrate a motherboard, memory chip, the graphics chip, a hard disk, sound chip, optical drive, the processor, CPU heat sink, a cooling fan, network chip, the battery, and an ExpressCard expansion bay for Firewire, external disk drives, SSD drives, wireless modules, TV tuners, additional memory, and card readers, while being encased in a metal-alloy material that houses also the display in the lid, keyboard and touchpad.
Laptop processors, also called mobile processors, are designed specifically for these small, portable computers, and feature lower power consumption compared to those powering desktop computers. Also, mobile hard disk drives are smaller and have a spinning speed of 5400 rpm and up to 7200 rpm in premium models. The graphics chips are usually integrated on the motherboard using part of the system memory, but the high-end models come with dedicated video memory for improved performance. Touchpads replacing computer mice, measure about 20 cm2 and work based on capacitive sensing technology feeling the pressure of your finger and moving the cursor on the screen.
All laptop computer parts are developed in smaller and smaller dimensions as the manufacturing companies tend to design lighter weight models reduced in size.

First Laptop Created



The history of the laptop sends us back in April 1976, when Xerox PARC developed the first portable computer prototype called Xerox NoteTaker. It never reached mass production but it was the inspiration source for the first commercially available notebook. Xerox NoteTaker was designed by Alan Key, Adele Goldberg, Douglas Fairbairn, and Larry Tesler. It featured a built-in monochrome display monitor, 128K 8-bit memory, 1MHz processing speed, a floppy disk drive, foldable keyboard and a mouse, using the Smalltalk operating system. The weight was of 22 Kg and the production costs were incredibly high, reaching $50,000, at the time of introduction.

One of the most important steps in the history of the laptop is the one taken in 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation that released the world’s first portable computer on the market at a price of $1795. Osborne 1 was called after its designer’s name, Adam Osborne, who created the 24.5-pound laptop powered by a Zilog Z80 processor featuring 4MHz speeds, 64K RAM memory, a 5-inch display with 53 x 24 text resolution, IEEE-488 port configurable as a Parallel printer port, RS-232 compatible 1200 or 300 baud Serial port for use with external modems or serial printers, modem, dual 5-1/4 inches 91K drives for storage, single sided, single density floppy disk drives, and the CP/M operating system.


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The first portable computer could be closed up and was coming with a carrying handle, and optional battery pack. It was capable to display maximum 52 characters per line but the user had the possibility to scroll back and forth using the cursor keys, and read up to 128 characters.
It was also the world’s first computer coming with software bundle, priced at $1500, which included a CP/M utility, SuperCalc spreadsheet, WordStar word processing with MailMerge, Microsoft MBASIC programming language, and Digital Research CBASIC programming language.



(Sources: computerhistory ; About.com ; Ligon GT Magnet Middle School ; howstuffworks)

Laptop vs Desktop Computers

It’s clear that if you use a computer mostly in an office or at home you should stay on the desktop PC and get a notebook only if you have to use the applications while on the go. I am saying this because, as you already know, laptops are not powerful than desktop PCs when we take into account the processing speeds and graphic capabilities. The portability, light weight and the slim keyboard are the laptop benefits, but if we discuss about the disadvantages of laptops, the first problem we meet is the upgradeability level, which is way lower than in the desktops’ case. This is because you can’t upgrade the entire notebook configuration and if you replace just some parts they won’t be compatible with the ones existent anymore.



Motherboards, keyboards and batteries are proprietary in design and only the original manufacturer can replace them. You can interchange the hard drive and the memory.
Other disadvantages include the high costs of the components, poor ergonomics, easiness to be stolen, and the integration of the keyboard on which you could accidentally spill liquids on, damaging this way the motherboard and the display. To change one of these 2 broken parts would cost you as much as a brand new laptop.

In conclusion, laptops provide more convenience for mobile use but have raised maintenance costs.