Netbooks Shoved Aside By Chep Notebooks Less Than $300

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People do it with their cars. People do it when when buying homes. People tend to do it with consumer electronics purchases such as notebook computers: They tend to super size it up. You may want all of the bells and whistles, but what do you really need?

A low-end laptop or  cheap desktop computer has pretty much all nearly all people need for every day use. If you're not into gaming or searching for a heavy duty multimedia console, why pay out more than you need to? That was my plan as I began shopping for a replacement for my five-year-old Gateway desktop computer.

Ok, I may be cheap (I prefer the term "thrifty"). I purchased my current cheap desktop computer from Gateway online, on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, in 2004. I paid around $300 after incentives, in a package that included a monitor and printer. It wasn't a  power computer in its day. But guess what? As a general  Windows XP powered cheap desktop computer, it's been extremely reliable, and plenty good enough for a litle Web surfing, checking e-mail, using home finance software and other household computing chores.

I was thinking about a less than $300 netbook this time around. The systems I looked at have about 1 GB of RAM, run Windows XP, and usually have pretty small keyboards and screens. But I figured I could make it work. I'd just hook up my external keyboard and display when it's at home.

If you do a little homework, however, you can find a low end laptop for under $400. This past weekend I ended up buying an Acer Aspire 5516 at my local Staples for $299.99. That puts the unit exactly into netbook territory.

The 5516 is no speed demon. It has a single core Athlon processor. It's merely an OK machine. But it's more than adequate for my requirements. And I bet it would probably meet the basic needs of 95% of people out there who spend $600 to $1,200 for a new notebook. In these tough economic times, why spend more?

What this system does offer for under $300 is remarkable. It runs Vista, not the older XP (that could be a pro or a con, depending on how you feel about Vista and I for one, don't like it.  It has a rather large laptop keyboard, a bright, 15.5 inch high resolution display, 2 GBytes of RAM, Wi-Fi, a 160 GB hard disk drive and a CD/DVD recorder/reader. You can get this model online for $349 or less. I got mine for less from Staples, which said Acer was no longer marketing this specific unit (AS5516-5474) to make way for a new model.

The sales rep then used that fact to try to sell a two-year "protection plan" for $60. Since it was being discontinued, he argued, Acer's one year warranty might not be enough. Nice try, but that didn't work with me.
While the warranty is most likely fine for the first year, notebook computers aren't easy to repair and do seem to fail more often than desktops. If you move yours around quite a bit the $60 payment - 20% of the purchase price - might be worthwhile. I decided to pass. Frankly, at 300 bucks the Aspire 5516 is almost a disposable article.

My expectations for the unit weren't high. So far, though, I have been pleasantly surprised at the performance and versatility of this machine. That's not to say that it's perfect. It's limited to two multifunction USB/card reader ports, an external VGA connector, Ethernet jack and a microphone and earphone connector. No fancy stuff like HDMI output here.

Like most notebook computers, this unit has all the usual crapware loaded on it (Works, a trial edition of Office, and other sundry programs I don't need). I'm still in the process of stripping all of those off. Overall the fit and finish is fine, with one exception. The outer skin on the crown of the clamshell case, which protects the back of the LCD panel, is a bit flimsy. So I'm careful when opening and closing the unit.

I also had my initial problem with Vista. Shortly after turning the device on for the first time, I closed the lid, putting the machine in hibernation mode. When I returned a few hours later Vista Home Basic had gone down. (Luckily, that hasn't happened since. And there's always Linux).

Despite those little glitches, however, I still the Aspire will be a good enough home office machine.