Compare Budget Laptop Computers

Budget laptops fill the void for people looking for a mobile computing experience without the high price tag. High-end notebooks with the fastest components and all the bells and whistles are great, but most of us don't want to take out a second mortgage to pay for a laptop.

Fortunately, laptop manufacturers have made great strides over the past few years in driving down the cost of budget laptops to the point where they now offer budget models that easily sell for less than $1000 and many models in the $700 range. Almost all of these budget laptop systems come with a one-year warranty, but when a laptop is priced this low, one-year parts and labor coverage is very reasonable.

Today's budget notebooks don't use outdated components. They typically feature very usable screens, reasonably fast processors, fairly spacious hard drives, and DVD-ROM/CD-RW drives. Manufacturers scale back on the memory a bit and include Celeron M rather than Pentium M processors, but as long as you don't plan to use your laptop for very high-end tasks like video editing or 3D gaming, these budget laptops offer all the performance you need.

If you're keeping a close eye on your budget, take a good look at these value-priced notebooks. Recommended models:

• Acer Travelmate 2300
• Dell Inspiron 2200
• Gateway M360X
• HP Pavilion ZE2000
• Sharp Actius MC24