And The Winners Are … - selecting, and purchasing, a personal computer; specific models are discussed - Buyers Guide

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, June, 2001 by Michael J. Martinez

Economy notebooks

NOTEBOOKS ON the cheap are hard to find, and good ones forless than $1,300 are even scarcer.

Dell's Inspiron 2500 wins the category in a tight but torpid race. The 700 MHz mobile Celeron processor, 64 MB of RAM and 5 GB hard drive were adequate and par for the course (upgrading to 128 MB of RAM is another $75). What boosted this $1,249 computer was a solid suite of software that includes Microsoft Works and Dell's cell-phone sync program.

Our other notable find was the Toshiba Satellite 1735, which goes for $1,099. It has a 700 MHz Celeron processor, 64 MB of RAM and a 10 GB hard drive. The one strike against it was Lotus's SmartSuite office software instead of the more widely used Microsoft Office or Microsoft Works.

Standard notebooks

THESE ARE THE notebooks that most people purchase. They cost between $1,300 and $2,000, and pack far more computing power than the economy-class computers.

Our favorite is Dell's Inspiron 4000, a $1,849 machine that comes with an 800 MHz Pentium III processor, 128 MB of RAM and a 10 GB hard drive. While it wasn't particularly feature-rich, it performed very well in our tests and boasts that three-year warranty.

Just below the Dell is IBM's ThinkPad i Series 1200, a solid machine for $1,749. It is less powerful than the Dell, with only a 700 MHz processor and 64 MB of RAM (upgrading to 128 MB of RAM costs $49). But it has twice as much memory on the hard drive, and it also comes with a DVD drive.

Bleeding-edge notebooks

YOU COULD REPLACE your desktop computer with one of these--and sometimes it feels as if you're lugging around a desktop. Still, they tear through most anything you throw at them.

Gateway's new Solo 9500 has the edge in this category. This $3,549 machine features the new 1 GHz mobile Pentium III processor, 128 MB of RAM and a 32 GB hard drive--the biggest hard drive we saw in a portable. The three-year parts-and-labor warranty and full telephone-support plan are excellent; the software on board is generous, packing Gateway's phone tools and child-protection software; and the battery life is pretty good for a machine of this size--about 2.5 hours. But what really caught our eye was the sharp, 15.7-inch screen.

We really, really liked Apple's new titanium PowerBook G4, even though three other machines received better scores. The G4 is light--just over five pounds--and has power to spare, along with a slot-loaded DVD player in the front. The keyboard is roomy, and the screen is just gorgeous--similar to a high-definition flat-panel TV screen. The only drawback is Apple's woeful tech support and warranty plans. For $3,499, it could do better than a one-year warranty and 90 days of free phone support.

Ultralight notebooks

THESE LIGHT WEIGHT powerhouses are the opposite of desktop replacements: slim and compact with no extraneous drives. We didn't put a price range on this category, but all entrants had to be four pounds or less.

Sony tops the category (which it helped invent a few years back) with its brand-new Vaio R505 SuperSlim Pro. The Vaio has a speedy 850 MHz Pentium III, along with 128 MB of RAM and a 20 GB hard drive, all in a 3.75-pound package. Software includes a number of photo- and video-editing tools, as well as a strong set of personal-finance and productivity titles, including Microsoft Works and Microsoft Money. You'll pay $2,999 for this newest Vaio, but the versatility, power and weight will take the edge off the price tag.