Nine Low-Cost Notebooks, Netbooks That Run Windows 7

By Nathan Eddy

On the higher end of notebooks, Dell is offering this Windows 7-equipped notebook with an instant savings of $400. Included with the 14-inch widescreen device is an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a 250GB hard drive, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and an integrated Webcam with digital microphone.

This thin and lightweight netbook comes with an 11.6-inch LED backlit screen and boasts 8 hours of battery life with the standard six-cell battery. Businesses requiring a larger screen or optical drive can opt for the AS3810, which offers a 13.3-inch display, or the AS4810, which adds an optical drive and 14-inch display.

Lenovo’s netbook offers a host of features for the price, including of course a 32-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium, a 12.1-inch display (with 1,280-by-800 resolution), a 1.6GHz N270 processor, a 250GB hard drive, a 256MB Ion GPU, 2GB of DDR2 memory, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, Wi-Fi functionality and a six-cell battery.

Loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium, this ultra-thin (1 inch thick) notebook sports a 15.6-inch LED-backlit LCD high-definition widescreen display, an Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processor, a 500GB Serial ATA hard drive and built-in face recognition technology, as well as three USB 2.0 ports and a 5-in-1 media card reader.

This Gateway boasts an AMD Athlon X2 dual-core processor, a six-cell lithium-ion battery, a 15.6-inch HD widescreen display and a multiformat DVD??RW/CD-RW drive with double-layer support. Also included are four USB 2.0 ports and a “MyBackup” button for quick backups.

Available to cost-conscious businesses in Europe, Asus’ popular Eee PC line adds this touch-screen netbook to its family. This model, the T91MT, offers an 8.9-inch display, a 160GB hard disk drive, Intel’s GMA 500 graphics chip set, 1GB of RAM and of course support for Windows 7’s multitouch interface.

This notebook features a 12.1-inch LED high-definition WXGA widescreen display with a built-in touch screen that rotates up to 180 degrees for sharing content. Users can fold the display flat for writing or drawing with the included digital pen.

This stylish notebook boasts a 15.5-inch LCD display and a built-in double-layer DVD??RW/CD-RW drive with Blu-ray Disc support, along with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB (expandable to 8GB) of PC2-6400 DDR2 memory.

This compact, lightweight (2.9 pounds) netbook offers a 10.1-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, a six-cell battery and an N280 Intel Atom processor with 512KB L2 cache and 1.66GHz processor speed. Also included is a built-in Webcam with microphone, three USB 2.0 ports and a multiformat media card reader.