Cheap Laptops from Dell
If you’re looking to buy a new laptop, now is the time. Every year, there are incredible deals on laptops right before the holidays. We just recently bought a 17 inch laptop on sale from Dell for under $600! What a steal! That price was unheard of a few years ago. 7 years ago, I bought my first laptop, a Sony Vaio for $1500 and it had a tiny 10.9 inch screen. Now I can’t imagine spending that amount again to upgrade my laptop.
I remember a few years back, there was a sale at Best Buy for a $500 laptop on Black Friday. But you had to line up early to try to buy one from a limited stock that day. Now, you don’t have to. Prices on electronics go down every single year. The longer you wait to buy a laptop, the cheaper and better it gets.
Dell has really stepped up as a computer manufacturer in the past few years. These budget laptops are cheap but not the quality. My husband has bought a few computers from Dell. Their computers have been reliable and affordable. The Dell website is really easy to navigate. Every product has customer ratings to help you choose the best computer for your needs.
Here is what you can get according to your budget.
Netbooks are 10.1 inch widescreen, 1Ghz mini-laptops designed for wireless Internet use and even include a built in webcam. These netbooks, loaded with Windows XP, are super lightweight at 2 – 3 lbs, making it great to travel with or checking your email at Starbucks. This is also a good size for kids.
Now, here are the drawbacks. What makes netbooks so lightweight is that they don’t have CD/DVD drives to allow you to save anything onto a disc. But you can easily connect a USB flash drive to quickly save something externally. They are not designed for computer processor intensive tasks such as video editing or gaming. And the keyboard is tiny. I have fairly small hands and even for me, it’s sometimes difficult to type accurately on it. A good solution for this is to plug in another keyboard.
Starting at $449 – Inspiron 14 with Windows Vista
For about a $150 more, you can get a dual core 2Ghz, 14 inch, thin and light laptop with a hi-def display and a 8x CD/DVD (dual layer DVD+/-R drive). A dual core processor is like having dual processors which make it run smoother and faster. Dual layer drives allow you to burn almost twice as much information (8.54GB) as single layer discs (4.7GB). This is perfect for burning HD videos onto DVD, which require more space. You can also choose colors like pink, red, green, blue, purple, black, or white. Pretty cool! At around 5 lbs., it’s lightweight and portable. However, these laptops don’t include a webcam.
The drawback of this laptop and probably the reason it’s so cheap is that it’s loaded with Windows Vista operating system. You can say what you want about Vista, good or bad. But the fact that Microsoft is phasing Vista out and has now moved onto Windows 7, speaks volumes. In my opinion, Vista is confusing and not user friendly. The first time I used it, I couldn’t figure out how to shut down the computer!
Starting at $599 – Inspiron 14 with Windows 7
Basically, this laptop is almost the same as the one above, but is loaded with Windows 7, has more memory, and a bigger hard drive.
Dell has more laptops on their website at different price points. These are just the ones I found to be the cheapest. I don’t know how long this sale lasts so get one soon.
Thanks for the outstanding information on these computers. You are a very smart person and deserve to have a great following. Maybe you can come on my radio and talk about your blog? Celeste