1. Toshiba Satellite L305-S5961 15.4-Inch Laptop – Black/Grey From Toshiba, Price:     $479.99

Offering solid performance and impressive affordability, the Satellite L505 laptop is tailor made for handling life’s essentials at home, school or work. Surfing the Net, downloading video, checking email, managing household finances or studying for finals, this easy-to-use, all-purpose, eco-smart machine makes an excellent first-time or secondary laptop. It gives you ample processing power, memory and storage for getting things done. It also offers broadband connectivity for staying in touch, along with ports for enjoying and sharing pictures and playlists. A stunning high-def display lends a new visual dimension to whatever you’re doing. While a brilliant high-gloss Fusion Finish design with a Breeze pattern in Graphite Gray means you’ll be multitasking in style.

2. Compaq Presario CQ60-410US 15.6-Inch Laptop From Hewlett Packard, Price:     $585.00

CLASSIC STYLE: The Compaq Presario CQ60 series Notebook PC redefines simplicity with thin lines, an iconic touchpad design and sleek touch control panel. Glossy black Imprint finish encases the form and is more durable than traditional painted surfaces. A silver panel covers the palm rest and touch pad area for clean contrast. HP¿s Notebook Design Group has been recognized by distinguished design institutions: International CES Innovations Design and Engineering Awards; iF International Forum Design Award; Industrial Design Excellence Awards; ID Magazine Annual Review; Good Design Awards. SIMPLY SECURE: Compaq Presario notebook PCs are designed with the features and power you need to get the most from Windows Vista. The result is intuitive system controls, powerful search and organization tools and more security when you go online. What’s in the box: cq60-410us laptop, 65W AC Adapter, 6-Cell Lithium-Ion battery, Symantec Norton Internet Security 2009 with 60 days complimentary live update, HP DVD Play, Microsoft Works, Muvee Reveal, Cyberlink DVD Suite, Adobe Acrobat Reader and HP Games Powered by Wild Tangent.

3. Lenovo 3000 G530 4446 – P T3400 / 2.16 GHz – RAM 2 GB – HDD 160 GB – DVD-Writer – GMA 4500M – WLAN : 802.11b/g – Vista Home Basic – 15.4″ Widescreen TFT 1280 x 800 ( WXGA ) VibrantView – camera – matte black – Microsoft Office Ready From Lenovo, Price:     $429.99

Offer a greater choice to your customers and satisfy the needs of more growing businesses, with the Lenovo G530 notebook. A smart addition to Lenovo range of business notebooks, the G530 notebook is engineered to include Lenovo-unique technologies that reduce downtime, improve productivity and lower Total Cost of Ownership.The Lenovo G530 notebook is a stylish widescreen notebook combining excellent features at a great price. Full-featured, widescreen Lenovo G530 notebooks provide not only the functionality to run a small business but also the features to enjoy computing at home.The same engineers that brought you the legendary keyboard design on ThinkPad notebooks now give you great tactile feel with intelligent layout and performance on other Lenovo notebooks. Thoughtfully designed, the keyboard has specialized keys and buttons for easy access to the Presentation Director application and LenovoCareSM tools, as well as multimedia controls for stop, play, forward, rewind and pause.

4. Acer AS4530-6823 14.1-Inch Blue Laptop From Acer, Price:     $529.99

Acer has done it’s homework with the Aspire AS4530 Laptop. Great value for the money! I whole heartedly recommend to anyone looking for top value for your dollar to purchase this line of laptop. Great features too numerous to mention here. You will just have to look over the spec’s and see what they offer for your money! This little PC has a great video display and the wi-fi/webcam combo are next to none. This laptop is built on an extremely stable hardware system and gives a 100% stable start-up and operation every time. I would not own anything else. This affordable laptop beats out ALL THE COMPETITION…. Give yourself some happiness…give yourself this Acer.

5. Toshiba Satellite L305-S5924 15.4-Inch Laptop From Toshiba, Price:     $519.99

Offering solid performance, a broad array of features and truly impressive pricing, the Satellite L305/L305D Laptop Series is designed to help budget-minded consumers enjoy the Toshiba quality and innovation they deserve. A stunning 15.4 inch display leads a new visual dimension to movies, gaming, photo, and more, plus school and business work. Equipped with powerful processors and lots of memory, these machines can supercharge multitasking, balancing the family budget or studying for finals. Integrated Wi-Fi helps you stay connected or surf the web at most any wireless hotspot. An attractive Onyx Blue finish is sure to draw attention. With their built-in Webcam and microphone, Satellite L305/L305D laptops let you stay in touch with friends, family and co-workers using real-time voice and video. The Toshiba L305-S5924 ships with Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium (SP1, 32 bit version), 2.16 GHz Intel Pentium T3400 Processor, 1MB L2 Cache, Mobile Intel GL40 Express Chipset, Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD with 128MB-830MB Dynamically Allocated Shared Graphics Memory, Configured with 2GB PC6400 DDR2 SDRAM,160GB (5400 RPM) Hard Drive (SATA), DVD SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) drive with LabelFlash supporting 11 formats, 15.4 in (Diagonal) Widescreen TruBrite TFT LCD Display at 1280 x 800 Resolution, webcam and microphone built into LCD bezel, Atheros 802.11b/g wireless LAN. Dimensions: 14.3 ” x 10.6″ x 1.3″ without feet, weight: Starting at 5.49 lbs.

So, where is your choice? you can buy it here at Laptop Notebook Shop. Save, secure and fast online shopping with Amazon Associate!

CHANGES FROM LAST YEAR

• $100 less
• 13″ aluminum macbooks became macbook pros
• 2.53Ghz up from 2.4GHz dual core
• 4GB RAM up from 2GB
• led display has 60% greater color gamut than previous model
• new advanced built-in battery that lasts up to 7 hours vs 4hrs
• FireWire is back (after all the complaints of first model)
• SD card slot (replaces express card slot)
• new models now come with iLife ‘09
• digital audio input is gone
• new model uses the same integrated mic and headphone port as the iPhone

PROS

• finally a price cut with a performance upgrade! i knew apple could do it. i was tired of paying for aesthetics and not performance.
• upcoming Snow Leopard OS upgrade in September will be free + $9.95 shipping to anyone purchasing a mac from 6/9 til December! nice perk!
• much better lcd screen! inline with the pro models…still glossy and still some glare but much nicer!
• backlight keyboard on all 13″ models now! ( i really enjoy this as it can be controlled from low to high)
• battery life is significantly better than last year.( i get about 6 hours w/ regular use not the 7hrs that is reported)
• the computer is designed beautifully truly a head turner.
• iLife 09 suite is superb for pictures, movies, and music. Good software really does sell hardware.
• SD card slot accepts SDHC, which goes up to 32GB and works like a charm. (can boot from SD card as well)

CONS

• none really but a few minor ones
• power cord is really short and does not reach as many places as I would like… must sit very close to power outlet.
• battery can’t be removed easily
• SD card sticks about half way out of slot. eye sore.
• blu-ray option would have been nice but understandable given licensing fees. (many blurays are offering digital copies which help)

Taking into consideration all the great improvements over last year with a nice price cut I can now truly recommend this near perfect Macbook Pro!

STUDENTS: If you buy this from the Apple Store you get an additional $100 off, a new iPod Touch 8gb, and a new printer via rebate) lasts until september!

Apple MacBook Pro MB990LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop Specification

Features

• 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo Processor
• 2 GB DDR3 RAM
• 160 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD SuperDrive
• Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system
• 13.3 inch LED Display, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics

Other Features

• Two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps), one FireWire 800 (up to 800 Mbps), SD card slot
• Mini DisplayPort compatible with DVI, VGA, and dual-link DVI connectors (all optional)
• Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors
• 8x slot-loading SuperDrive with the following write speeds: 8x DVD±R; 4x DVD±R DL (double layer); 4x DVD±RW; 24x CD-R; 10x CD-RW
• Built-in full-size backlit keyboard with 78 (U.S.) or 79 (ISO) keys, including 12 function keys and 4 arrow keys (inverted “T” arrangement)
• Internal omnidirectional microphone and built-in speakers
• Combined optical digital output/headphone out with selectable analog audio line in (minijack)
• Kensington lock slot
• Measures 12.78 x 8.94 x 0.95 inches (WxDxH) and weighs 4.5 pounds (including battery)

The specs for this model are aimed at someone focused on web browsing and office type applications who wants superb battery life:

CPU – The Core 2 duo is the best performing notebook CPU on the market and the T6500 included with this computer is a mid-range Core2 Duo (2.1 GHZ w/2MB cache). It can handle two threads which means you can have the virus scanner running while you surf the web with no noticeable slowdown. It’s not the highest performing CPU out there today but it’s far above what you need for non-gaming tasks and it has a enough performance head-room to keep your computer from becoming outdated anytime soon.

RAM – The 4GB of RAM is combined with a 64bit OS to which should provided more than enough memory for pretty much any application you can think of outside of extremely high end gaming.

HDD – 320GB plenty is far more space than you need now but again, I like the future proofing. Some people may not like that it is 5400 RPM vs. 7200 RPM but the performance difference for home users is nearly zero and the reliability of 5400 RPM drives makes me prefer them in notebooks which are hard on hard disks (because they move around while in use notebook HDDs suffer far more failures than desktop drives)

Graphics – While I am a fan of Intel CPUs their graphics performance has lagged the competition. The good news is that the integrated Intel 4500MHD graphics controller in this model is a step up from previous Intel offerings and all most home users will need. I still wouldn’t recommend you try and run graphics hungry 3-D games on it but it’s fine for playing videos, surfing the web, doing light gaming, and running office applications.

Display – I like this 15.6″ display though I got my mother-in-law the 16″ version of the DV6. While a little smaller than what I settled on it is far superior to the 14-15″ screens you usually see in this price range.

Sound – Surprisingly good sound for a notebook. The speakers are well positioned and deliver a good range. I’ve heard better but it was on a $3K notebook.

Battery – For years the retail notebook market has been plagued with cheap six cell and even four cell batteries that could barely deliver 90 minutes of real computing use. To see HP bundle a 12 cell Li-Ion battery in with this notebook is hopefully a sign the industry is recognizing that notebook users want good battery life. With a 12 cell battery you can realistically plan to go all day without plugging in. This does add slightly to the weight but few users will notice. You will be hard pressed to find another laptop in this price range with a batter this good. Most will have a 6 cell.

I don’t have any serious “cons” for this computer. The “Touch Media Controls” for things like the volume (as opposed to buttons you push) are a little odd at first but we got used to them quickly and hey, they look cool when they light up.

To wrap it all up: a good computer for home users who don’t plan on running high-end games and who looking for something with above average build quality and really good battery life.

Features

• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T6500, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
• 4 GB DDR2 RAM (2 Dimm) (8 GB Maximum)
• 320GB (5400RPM) Hard Drive (SATA), SuperMulti 8X DVD±R/RW with LightScribe and Double Layer Support
• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit edition with Service Pack 1
• 15.6 inch Diagonal High Definition HP BrightView Display (1366×768)

SPECIFICATIONS:

Processor:
2.10GHz Intel^® Core^™2 Duo Processor T6500

Operating System:
Genuine Windows Vista^® Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1

Display:
15.6″ Diagonal High-Definition HP BrightView Infinity Display

Hard Drive:
320 GB

Memory (RAM):
4 GB

Graphics Card:
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD (shared) with up to 1759MB total available graphics memory

Wireless:
Wireless LAN 802.11a/b/g/n WLAN

Battery:
12-cell Lithium-Ion Battery

Weight & Dimensions (w x d x h):
6.34lbs; 14.9″ x 10.15″ x 1.33″/1.61″

This review is more about the A355 chassis, than this exact spec laptop, and should apply to just about every one of the laptops in this series whether they run AMD or Intel chips.

The first view is that the materials are just plain flat out gorgeous. From the shiny exterior, to the semi rounded base, the two large chrome mouse buttons, the nicely integrated Harmon Kardon speakers, the illuminated touch areas, the big beautiful monitor, and those shiny keys. Yes this is one very pretty computer.

Under that pretty hood are some interesting specs. It used to be incredibly rare to see an eSATA port on any computer, let alone a laptop. Well this one has exactly that – an eSATA port that doubles as a USB port. Nice option to hook up external hard drives. It also includes an iLink, Firewire, or IEEE-1394 port – an incredible rarity (even Apple dropped this port). The audio ports and volume control are on the front, nicely placed. There’s absolutely no ports on the rear. There’s also an express card slot (not a PCMCIA slot, but EXPRESS card slot) and a multi flash memory card reader (they’ve dropped CF from the list). It does not include Bluetooth – a very strange omission since every single bluetooth adapter uses the Toshiba stack to run. Use either of these adapters, they work perfectly: IOGear GBU421 Bluetooth 2.0 USB Micro Adapter or Cirago BTA3210 Class 2 Micro Bluetooth Adapter (Black Tip) – both are outstanding miniscule adapters.

Toshiba stuffed 4Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard drive into this big baby. Those are some pretty nice features in a laptop this inexpensive. Those Harmon Kardon speakers sound very nice.

You’ll either hate this or love it, and fortunately you can turn this off if you hate it. The Toshiba name, a little band above the scratchy navigation pad, and the media buttons all light up white (pretty bright at that). I think it looks pretty cool, but others have hated all those lights.

The monitor, oh that monitor is gorgeous. Movies pop, they look absolutely fantastic on this computer. It’s a nice big screen. Yes it is a gloss finish and you do get some reflections here or there, but generally it’s not bad.

June 2009 Update – my son managed to crack the display. I can see no reason to blame the design nor Toshiba for this crack. Thank goodness I have a 3 year no fault warranty which replaced the screen at no charge (well they charged for the policy). I would not be surprised if my football player son fell asleep and rolled over on top of his laptop. No company in the world can design around that scenario at this price point (yeah you can buy a toughbook – but it’s way more expensive than this one). Huge display, light weight… no elephant can stand on this baby and not expect it to break. Downside to all this, he’s been without this computer for 2 weeks and is driving me crazy (again, not Toshiba’s fault).

The keys are all glossy and the fanatical among you might not like all the visible fingerprints, but I think most will get over that quickly. There is just a ton of room to put your hands to type and use the computer. That surface in front is sweet for a palm rest.

Function-wise, this computer is a decent performer. Nobody is buying this to run heavy games or render video – it won’t do those things. But for the occasional game, the occasional video edit, you’ll score well here.

Do note, this computer runs Windows Vista Premium 64-Bit. Please don’t be afraid of that operating system. I’m running 64 bit on two computers and it runs just beautifully. There is almost no new hardware that won’t run under 64 bit these days. It’s a rock solid platform. And that OS allows all 4Gb of memory to be seen and used (32 bit tops out at 3Gb). And if you don’t believe me, type this into google – pcmag 64 bit computing. Read the first article in that hit list.

This is no lightweight computer. It’s a big, pretty heavy laptop. Great for around the house. Not something you would travel everywhere with. But it is portable. Heat generation is nothing extreme. It does pull air in from below, so be careful about couches or beds plugging those holes.

It’s a good solid fast computer. There’s a bit of fan noise, nothing huge, but you will know the machine is running. I hate to comment on battery life, that’s so dependent on how bright you make the screen, processor speed settings and the like. I got a good solid 2 hours of hitting it very hard at max everything. You could probably get a good 3 hours, maybe 4 at more conservative settings.

Something to keep in mind, Toshiba ships all their laptops full of bloat-ware. It’s a really good idea to remove it all. Almost none of it is necessary. There are two websites that will clear all that garbage out of your computer. It’s explained in a great article at PCMag. Type this into google, PCMag make the most out of your new pc. The first hit will be a fantatstic article on how to remove the garbage.

Overall, this is a big, beautiful, good sounding, heavy, hard working, well priced laptop.

Features of Toshiba Satellite A355-S6931 16.0-Inch Laptop:

• 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 processor (Centrino 2)
• 4 GB RAM (max)
• 320 GB hard drive, Labelflash dual-layer DVD drive
• Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1 (64-bit version)
• 16-inch screen for true 16:9 aspect ratio and native 720p high-def resolution. Intel GMA X4500MHD graphics (up to 1750 MB total available memory

The keys are spaced very well for me … the keyboard has an excellent feel. The glossy black finish is a bit unfortunate, as they instantly show smudging. The trackpad mouse button does indeed require Thumb of Steel, but nicely accomodates left- and right-clicking without being separated into two buttons.

I’m amazed at how happy I am with the screen. I don’t like the glassy displays, but as long as the backlighting is intense, it can be used in fairly bright light. That’s the case with this screen. The resolution is very crisp. I have not had any need or desire to adjust the color settings.

Speakers are not great in terms of volume, but I just can’t imagine docking a review for that quibble. The laptop is thin and light – get some headphones!

The battery life is phenomenal, as advertised; the first time I’ve ever had a laptop that performed within 50% of the advertised battery life.

The CPU is probably a little underpowered for Vista, but not terribly so. I’m sure that I will be happier with Windows 7 when it comes out.

Now for Linux. I shrunk the Vista partition down drastically using GParted from an Ubuntu 9.04 live CD. After that was done and I rebooted, Vista determined that something was wrong and launched a repair process that took a very long time to complete (2 hours+). It then came up into Vista and I have had no problems with it.

I formatted most of the freed space to give over to Ubuntu. I was completely floored by how much worked immediately: sound, wireless, keyboard control of volume, webcam, USB … wow. After upgrading to a slightly newer Linux kernel (2.6.30), wireless now comes up correctly after being suspended, and keyboard control of screen brightness works. I can’t think of anything that doesn’t work other than multitouch gestures on the touchpad. Battery life seems to be as good as when running Windows. Speed for the tools of my trade is great when running Linux: emacs, X windows, SSH, Firefox and Flash.

Unlike a previous reviewer, I am in no sense a “casual” user; I do software development and am always a power user of software. But not a gamer or graphics guy who needs PhotoShop. I tend to view my laptop as a window to development servers using X and SSH, and a window to the Web using a browser. For those uses, this little laptop is entirely capable. So both the casual and the geeky can find happiness with the Acer 4810.

Acer Aspire 4810 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop Spesification

Product Details

• Brand: Acer
• Model: LX.PDN0X.045
• Dimensions: 1.10″ h x 1.10″ w x 13.30″ l, 4.20 pounds
• CPU: Intel Pentium M 1.3 GHz
• Memory: 3000MB DDR2 SDRAM
• Hard Disk: 320GB
• Processors: 1
• Display size: 14

Features

• Intel Pentium SU2700 1.30GHz Processor (2MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB)
• 3GB DDR3 1066 SDRAM
• 320GB 5400RPM Hard Drive, SuperMulti Drive,
• Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, 6 Cell Lithium-Ion Battery (up to 8 Hours of Battery Life)
• 14.0″ WXGA TFT LCD Display (1366 x 768), Intel Graphics Media accelerator 4500MHD