Group test: Budget notebook PCs

You don’t have to spend and arm and a leg to pick up a portable PC

There are many reasons for choosing a notebook PC over a desktop. Portability is the main motive, of course – whether you’re roaming far and wide around the planet or just from room to room within your own home.

Convenience and style are also factors. Notebook computers are both neater to look at when they’re in use and easier to hide away when they’re not. But if there’s been a big spanner in the works up till now, it’s been cost.

It used to be a general rule of thumb that notebook computers were considerably more expensive than desktops, largely due to the fact that it costs more to produce the LCD displays and the specialised small components that make up a portable PC.

Nowadays, however, you needn’t expect to pay big bucks for a smaller PC. As the next few pages will show, it’s possible to pick up a very good notebook from a well-respected manufacturer for less than £500.

How come they’re so cheap? It would be fair to say that the more you spend, the more inherent raw power you’re likely to get. While our sub-£500 notebooks are perfectly happy carrying out everyday tasks like surfing the web, listening to music, working on office documents and digital photos, power-hungry tasks like video editing are better suited to a more powerful PC.

Fans of the latest 3D games should probably budget for a more expensive machine too, since graphical prowess is not a strong point for any of the six computers in this group test. Simple games will run with few problems though.

For the average user, however, these low-cost notebooks will more than fit the bill. All of them feature built-in wireless networking, generous 15.4in screens and almost all weigh less than 3kg, making them relatively comfortable to carry around. Most include trial-versions of anti-virus software, but free versions are available online. See our Downloads section for details.

There’s still plenty of room for variety below the £500 barrier, though. So read on to find out which of our budget notebooks best balances low cost with a good range of features, style and ease of use, and check the summary table pdf.

Vista on horizon
Early next year Microsoft launches the successor to Windows XP – Windows Vista. There are two versions aimed at home users: Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premier. That doesn’t mean that Windows XP will be outdated overnight, but we’d suggest that buying a computer now that won’t be ready for Vista probably isn’t a good idea.

The good news is that all of the notebooks in this round-up are suitable for running Home Basic, with one exception. The Toshiba Satellite Pro A120 only features 256MB of memory, which isn’t enough to run even the least demanding version of Vista.

Our budget notebooks’ limited graphical capabilities, however, may prevent some of them from qualifying as Vista Premium Ready, meaning that some of the operating system’s snazzy new look may not be supported.

Many PC manufacturers are beginning to offer free upgrades to Vista with Windows XP systems bought between now and the Vista launch date, so watch out for these. Find out more information on Vista’s system requirements.

This article is part of a group test of budget notebooks.
The table can be read via our Pdf download.
Others are:
Acer Aspire 5101 AWLMi
Asus A6Rp-AP026H
Fujitsu Siemens Amilio Pi 1505
Hi-grade Notino W5600
MSI Megabook M670
Toshiba Satellite Pro A120
The winner is on the next page

The winner
Under £500 it can be quite hard to tell one notebook from another. In terms of their size, shape, design and outward features, the six PCs in our test might at first appear to share many similarities.

Delve a little deeper and you’ll find that they actually contain a surprisingly varied range of components, which has a considerable effect in terms of performance.

Scooping our Buy It award, we found that the Fujitsu-Siemens AMILO Pi 1505, with its dual-core processor, was well equipped to take on any number of family computing tasks. It also comes with a useful selection of software and isn’t a bad-looking machine.

Coming in a close second was the Acer Aspire 5101 AWLMi, which also did well in our tests and featured some interesting surprises, such as its Windows Media Center software and built-in webcam.