HP Compaq C501NR - Another Sub-$500 Vista Home Basic Laptop

HP Compaq Presario C501NR, another Vista Home Basic notebook PC offer for less than $500, is available at BestBuy. The 15.4-inch widescreen Presario C501NR is priced at $499.99 after $100 instant off and comes with Intel Celeron M at 1.73GHz, 512MB of main DDR2 memory, 80GB SATA hard drive and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive.

It features an integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics with up to 64MB of shared memory. The Compaq Presario C501NR has built-in Ethernet LAN, wireless LAN 802.11b/g and a 56k modem. There are also two USB ports, VGA out and S-Video out, but this notebook doesn’t provide a PCMCIA PC Card slot or an ExpressCard slot, according to product page.

HP Compaq Presario C501NR weights 6.6 lbs.

Link: Compaq Presario Notebook with Intel® Celeron® M Processor 430

This laptop is alright, but there is a serious design flaw. The screen is much too heavy for the hinges in back, and the way in which it is attached leads to the screen falling off within a year. Another problem I experienced was with the VGA port failing and the cd drive occasionally doing the same.