Laptops group test (under £400)

October 13, 2008 by Insider Staff

At one time notebooks were seen simply as business tools, but they’re quickly becoming the essential computers for everyone. The latest models offer close to desktop performance and nigh on as much storage to boot. However, when it comes to choosing a budget notebook, don’t simply choose the cheapest and hope for the best. A little research will reveal plenty of bargains to choose from.

Think how you’ll use it and whether portability is important - do you simply want as much power as possible for the price? A typical notebook should have a 15.4-inch screen, budget dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM but still have everything you need, included DVD rewriter and plenty of storage.

If you simply want to surf the internet and do simply things, possibly a netbook – a new class of notebook designed for the super-budget market – will suit instead. We’ve brought together what we think are the best notebooks and netbooks currently out there, all of them with one thing in common: a great asking price!