Notebooks at Netbook Prices: How Low Can We Go?

Best Buy Laptops

Shopping online at Best Buy, you can find items that are available at the stores as well as "outlet items" - discontinued items that are being sold at reduced prices. Some of the outlet items are particularly attractive, especially since we're not looking for top-end, modern hardware. The problem with these items is that we don't know how long they'll be available, and finding exact specifications is often difficult. As with Wal-Mart, there's definitely some attractive pricing available.

Priced at just $330, the Compaq Presario CQ60-211DX is a reasonable alternative to the $300 Wal-Mart laptop. As usual, there are a few notable differences. The processor is an Intel Celeron 585 (single-core, 65nm, 2.16GHz, 1MB L2, 667MHz FSB), which should provide similar performance to the Compaq Presario CQ60-419WM. However, you get 2GB RAM and the standard Intel GL40 Express Chipset/GMA 4500M chipset/graphics combination. Since this is an outlet item, we're not sure how long it will be available, but it's certainly a better alternative than the $450 Celeron 585 laptops we found at Wal-Mart.

This is possibly the best option in terms of bang for the buck right now, as you can get a dual-core AMD Athlon X2 QL-62 processor (dual-core, 65nm, 2.0GHz, 2x512KB L2, 3600MHz HyperTransport) and Windows Vista Home Premium for only $380. This laptop also uses an NVIDIA GeForce 8200M chipset and provides a 250GB hard drive. There's no webcam and it only ships with 2GB RAM, but you can upgrade the memory quite easily to 4GB for under $50. Battery life is listed as 2.5 hours, which is another drawback, but if you don't need to run on battery for long periods of time this should be a decent inexpensive laptop.

A similar system for a bit more money and 3GB RAM is the Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5965, which also upgrades the CPU to an AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-65 (2.1GHz instead of 2.0GHz) and switches to the AMD M780V chipset with ATI Radeon 3100 graphics. The $50 price increase makes this something of a tossup.

There are several similar Dell laptops listed at Best Buy for under $500; the best in terms of price and features is another outlet item, the Dell Inspiron I15-156B currently selling for $400. This one comes with an Intel Pentium T4200 (dual-core, 45nm, 1MB shared L2, 2.00GHz, 800MHz FSB), 3GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, GL40/GMA 4500M chipset, and Windows Vista Home Premium. Battery life is again listed as 2.5 hours.

An upgraded Dell Inspiron I1545-014B-WHT bumps the memory up to 3GB, hard drive 250GB, adds a webcam, and apparently doubles the battery capacity because battery life is listed as 4.5 hours. If you're concerned about battery life, this looks like a very good option for $500.

The final Best Buy laptop we want to mention is another Dell, this time a 14" Inspiron I1440-016B-BLK model. Once again the price is $500, and many of the specifications are similar to the above 15.6" Dell laptops. What's interesting is that this 14" laptop has more memory (4GB) and Vista Home Premium 64-bit along with a 320GB 5400RPM hard drive. The upgrades don't end there, as you also get Gigabit Ethernet and an LED backlit LCD. For the same price, why would anyone want to choose the larger Inspiron 15 listed above? The only question is battery life, which Best Buy doesn't specify. Dell's Inspiron 14 gives you the option of a 4-cell 37Whr, 6-cell 48Whr, or 9-cell 85Whr battery; the 4-cell battery will obviously weigh the least, but battery life would be very poor. Incidentally, putting together the same system at Dell's site ends up with a price closer to $600, though you do get the added flexibility of choosing your components (i.e. the battery). For $500, the basic Best Buy model has a very good feature set - and you can always add a larger battery in the future if necessary.