Expert: Bobbert - 9/5/2006

Question
I have limited knowledge about laptops and I want to buy one. I have about 800.00 to spend and want one that I can read and send surf the net, email, burn and play cd/s and dvd's, proform my on line banking needs when my husband and I are traveling the country in our RV. What do you suggest?

Answer
Most laptops can perform what you want, and won't consume your entire budget. However do expect a somewhat pedestrian system, so gaming will probably not be a grand experience.

I'd suggest looking at newegg.com, models from Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, and Acer America, also you could check Dell at www.dell.com, and Compaq at www.hp.com (they usually have good rebates).

I'd suggest, for your needs, 512MB of RAM or more, 40GB hard drive or more, an optical drive that meets your specifications (speed might not be the most impressive thing, although if it burns what you want it to burn, I would say it's probably ok).

I'd also suggest to get a laptop using an Intel CPU, mostly to get the integrated Intel Centrino WiFi card, to allow you to use wireless networks without a PCMCIA addin card (which is around $20-$50), but instead use the built in hardware that the Centrino WiFi system provides.

As far as CPU goes, Celeron M, Pentium M, Core Solo, and Core Duo are all acceptable for your needs, and if you find a system on a Sempron64 or Turion64 (from AMD) that has built in WiFi, and fits a better price for you, I'd say go for it, but the built in WiFi is definately a good feature to have (or an included PCMCIA adapter card).

-bob