Budget-friendly Laptops for Back to School Consumers

Aug. 17, 2009 -- Looking for a new laptop as back-to-school season begins? ABC News has the scoop on four budget-friendly options to help consumers as they scour the market for the right choice.

In an interview Monday on ABC NewsNow's "Ahead of the Curve," Mark Spoonauer, Laptop Magazine's editor-in-chief, talked about a handful of laptops that are making the grade this fall.

Starting at the lower end of the budget spectrum, the Toshiba Satellite L355 is a 17-inch notebook that sells for $348, the latest example of Wal-Mart moving into the laptop market. But for such a low price, there are some trade-offs, Spoonauer said.

"You don't get a memory card slot, you don't get HDMI for output to a high-definition monitor," he said. "But when you think about everything that's built in, it's actually quite good for the price. You get a 2 GHz Celeron processor — not a dual-core but still plenty fast for what students need. You get 3 gigs of ram and a 250 GB hard drive. When you add all of that up, we took a look at what the competition offers in the 17-inch space and this is $250 better than the competition."

"To us it's almost like a Black Friday special," he added. "People should think about getting this system. It's really worth the investment, I think, for people who want a bigger screen."

Consumers can't afford to take their time if they're interested in purchasing one, he added, because the Wal-Mart special is only available as long as supplies last.

"You are getting a lot for your money," he noted, "so I don't expect it to last very long."

Another option from Toshiba is the company's entry into the netbook line, albeit a year later than most competitors. But the Toshiba mini NB205 – at a price of $399 – is worth the wait, Spoonauer said.

"They took a look at the market, they saw what they needed to do, and I think they really hit a home run in terms of design," he observed. "It's really important for something under three pounds, you're going to take it with you everywhere. If you take a look at the touchpad and the touchpad buttons, they're the largest in its class. It seems like a small thing, but it's really important for the netbook category. And the other thing we really love about this system was the endurance. You're going to get over nine hours of battery life that we saw in our test and that was with continuous wi-fi Web surfing."