Originally published December 1 2005
Affordable laptops with improved performance becoming increasingly available
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A recent survey found one-third of all business PC users own a notebook computer and more than half of all computers sold since May have been laptops. Gateway and Toshiba offer reliable and inexpensive laptop models.
Notebook PCs, once considered an underpowered and overpriced computing option, are gaining ground on desktops at a rapid pace.
Inexpensive notebooks --- while still more expensive than desktops --- are within the reach of many PC buyers.
This thin-and-light notebook is sold under different nameplates, depending on whether you're a large or medium business, small business or home buyer.
Gateway sent me the business version, but it's available as the NX250X for $1,378 for home users, and the S7200-N for $1,285.
There are slight hardware differences --- the 2 gigahertz processor speed is only available in the M250 version I used, for example, and there are some security features in the business model.
For instance, on the NX250X, the DVD-RW is a standard feature, which is increasingly the case on consumer notebooks.
While the resulting battery life was excellent, averaging about five hours when using WiFi extensively, it also added dramatically to the notebook's heft.
This is billed as a thin-and-light model, and it goes from being 4.81 pounds with the standard four-cell battery to 5.84 pounds with the 12-cell.
It uses Intel's shared-memory video adapter and only borrows 8 megabytes for graphics.
The Satellite M55-S139 falls into this class.
It uses ATI's Radeon X200M graphics adapter, which can borrow up to 128 MB of RAM from the system.
So how does Toshiba get to this price?
The processor is a 1.6-GHz Celeron M, less powerful than the Pentium M. There's no memory card reader, which is increasingly common on consumer notebooks.
Like the Gateway, it uses a touchpad and has a nice keyboard.
The ATI graphics adapter shows some promise for games, although high-end titles such as Half-Life 2 are going to struggle because of the shared memory.
All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NaturalNews.com/terms.shtml