HP G60-230US

For those on the tightest of budgets, few laptops do a better job of giving you more for less than the HP G60-230US and the very similar HP G60-235DX (*Est. $500). The chief difference between these two laptops is that the latter has a less capable Wi-Fi radio that lacks compatibility with the latest Draft-N wireless standard. The heart of this laptop is a dual-core Pentium CPU. Although that's old technology, and a bit slower than the Core 2 Duo processors found in laptops that are a little more, it is also clearly superior to the less capable AMD and Intel Celeron processors found in many other laptops in this price range. The 320 GB hard drive and 3 GB of RAM are also above average for the class. If you have a little more to spend, the Gateway MD7801u (*Est. $600) and MD7818u (*Est. $600) offer a modern Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a more impressive lineup of components and features. The two Gateway laptops are identical except for color (The MD7801u comes in black, and the MD7818u is burgundy).

Because they are nearly identical, we consider reviews of the HP G60-235DX and the HP G60-220US. The best testing based review is by CNET, which reports on the HP G60-235DX. Mark Kyrnin of About.com reports on the HP G60-220US in a review that's balanced but does not detail testing. User reviews of these laptops are plentiful and can be found at BestBuy.com, Amazon.com and Newegg.com.