For a while now it’s been true that laptops are outselling desktop computers. Netbooks are largely responsible for the increase in sales, and as such have driven the price of standard-sized laptops down.
What’s the cheapest you can get?
Around $400 to to $499 new. The $500 price barrier was broken a while ago and we can now buy laptops at unheard of prices that are good solid units.
What do you get for the money?
A fairly powerful machine. The Acer Aspire AS5517-5671 notebook comes with:
- AMD Athlon 64 TF-20 1.6GHz
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
- 15.6-inch widescreen display
- 3GB RAM
- 160GB HDD (small but does the job)
- DVD burner
- ATI Radeon HD 3200
- 1366×768 native resolution montor
..for $450.
The only drawback is that the battery is crappy and only has 2.5 hours of life to it. But it’s still a fantastic set of hardware for the money.
Oh, and it’s black. And we all know black computers look the best. They have the most "businessy" serious look to them. Hey, looks count and the Acer literally does it in fine style.
If you’re in a Dell way, would rather have an Intel CPU and want to save an extra 50 bucks, the Inspiron 15 is a fine choice. The specs are almost identical to the Acer. Cost: $399. And it’s also black. 
End result: You get a lot for the money with even the cheapest laptops
Whether you go with Acer, Dell, Toshiba or Gateway, all have offerings under the $500 mark. The majority of them have 64-bit CPUs and have Windows 7 Home Premium, so there’s no Microsoft "starter licensing" crapola to deal with, other than standard activation.
What about Mac?
The base Macbook is a fine computer, but it’s more than double the price of a basic Windows laptop at $999. And it’s white. Apple used to have a black MacBook offering, but no longer. Pity, because it looked pretty good. Also, if you go Mac you’ll lose two inches of screen space because the MacBook only has a 13.3-inch screen. If you want 15 or more, that’s reserved for MacBook Pro territory – starting at $1,699 for the lowest priced 15-inch version (and don’t even ask what the 17-inch goes for).
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I wonder how much of this reduced price is also coming with reduced quality (i.e. premature failure of components). My experience with this is limited…but not good.
I am sure there is a reduction in quality. The question is whether it matters or not. The prices are so low they are almost disposable. Just buy a new (and presumably more powerful) one if it breaks. I figure if you can get 18-24 months out of a sub $500 notebook you are ahead.
The prices for the new laptops are definitely down from a year ago when the cost was around 100 dollars more than this for similar specs on some models. There will always be new laptops that go bad soon due to the cheap components in the price range but if you get a good one the specs are pretty sweet.
Those 160GB hard drives do fill up quick though so it can become high maintenance in that regard. A good addition to one of these is get a deal on an external hard drive at the some time if you deal with a lot of big files.
I had just purchased an Asus laptop with an i7 and some really heavy duty graphics card inside. The laptop is for my son but after playing with it for a couple of hours, I was hooked. The unit is not certainly cheap by any standard ($1299) but this thing just flies and encoding an hd video is a 40-55 minute experience. While I do realize this type of a laptop is not the best representation of an average laptop, anyone who is willing to spend a bit of extra cash can have the power of a desktop right in the palm of their hand.