ENTRY-LEVEL LAPTOPS

The notion of an entry-level laptop shouldn’t be identified merely by price (between £1000 and £1300), but should also be recognised as a machine that’s capable of dealing with the day-to-day business of mobile computing. When it comes to choosing a laptop on a limited budget there are often sacrifices that need to be made. This can take the form of choosing a system with, for example, a smaller hard drive capacity, a slower processor, a smaller-than-normal screen or an optical drive that’s less than cutting-edge. However, thanks to the price war that’s being waged in the laptop market, buyers will discover that their money now goes further than ever before.

Almost all the machines in this review would have cost £1500 some six months ago. So, in this group test you will find laptops with screens up to 17 inches in size and hard drives in excess of 60GB. More impressive still is the emergence of Intel’s Pentium M processor in this price group, offering extended battery life, and going up against the AMD Athlon 64 and its next generation desktop processing technology. Overall, we think that while the name of the group may be entry-level, the 10 machines on test have enough to offer everyone regardless of their needs.

Advent 7047
AJP 8355
Dell Inspiron 510m
Evesham Voyager XT PM17
HP Compaq Presario R3050EA
Maxdata ECO 3200X
NEC Versa M320
Pico Systems Captivator Plus
Tiny Mediabook MK3200 MS
Toshiba Tecra M2

REVIEW CO-ORDINATOR:
Roger Kirkwood

REVIEWS:
Michael Browne
Roger Kirkwood

PHOTOGRAPHY:
Adrian Lyon