Affordable and lightweight laptops are few and far between: You'd have to settle for either a netbook or a desktop replacement laptop in order to spend less than $1,000. I'd like to see more systems that don't skimp on screen real estate yet are still relatively light, in the range of 4 to 5 pounds. The HP Pavilion dv3z ($980 direct), a 13-inch lightweight beauty, easily meets these criteria while keeping prices in the three-digit range. The only catch is that you'll have to settle for AMD parts, which, unfortunately, aren't as fast as their Intel counterparts. If your workloads are as light as this system, however, performance shouldn't matter.
Hewlett-Packard Company
http://www.hp.com
- Price as Tested: $980.00 Direct
- Type: General Purpose, Media, Value
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
- Processor Name: Mobile AMD Turion 64 X2 ZM-84
- Processor Speed: 2.3 GHz
- RAM: 4 GB
- Weight: 4.6 lb
- Screen Size: 13.3 inches
- Screen Size Type: widescreen
- Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 3200
- Storage Capacity: 320 GB
- Networking Options: 802.11n
- Primary Optical Drive: DVD+R DL
