So you’re heading back to school and you need a new laptop—but you didn’t manage your finances over the summer. Your bank account is nearly tapped out, and you still need to buy text books and lay in enough ramen noodles to last through the winter. Yeah, we’ve all been there. Fortunately, Moore’s Law is still in play, so today’s budget notebook is yesterday’s workhorse. Pretty much any modern laptop can handle the gamut of productivity chores—word processing, number crunching, email, and the like—but all of the machines in this roundup can also tackle media editing and encoding sessions, and deliver respectable entertainment experiences. To strike the best balance between performance and affordability, I gathered the top five notebooks I could find for $650 or less. Benchmark busters they’re not, but they aren’t budget busters, either. CPU, memory, and storage specs Model CPU Memory Storage Asus VivoBook S550CA (Reference) Intel Core i5-3317U 6GB DDR3/1600 500GB 5400-rpm (+24GB cache) Acer Aspire E1-572-6870 Intel Core i5-4200U 4GB DDR3/1600 500GB 5400-rpm Dell Latitude 3330 Intel Core i3-2375m 4GB DDR3/1600 320GB 5400-rpm HP Pavilion TouchSmart 11z-e000 AMD A4-1250 4GB DDR3/1333 500GB 5400-rpm Lenovo IdeaPad Z400 Touch Intel Core i5-3230M 6GB DDR3/1600 1TB 7200-rpm Toshiba SatelliteL55Dt-A5253 AMD A6-5200 6GB DDR3/1333 750GB 5400-rpm I used several criteria to evaluate these laptops, including benchmark performance, storage capacity, weight,... Continue reading at 'PC World'
[ PC World | 2013-08-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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#haswell family
So you’re heading back to school and you need a new laptop—but you didn’t manage your finances over the summer. Your bank account is nearly tapped out, and you still need to buy text books and lay in enough ramen noodles to last through the winter. Yeah, we’ve all been there. Fortunately,... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2013-08-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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#battery life
#haswell family
There’s nothing more exciting to me than a laptop with unique features or an out-of-the-box design. While a slew of brand spanking new laptops were announced at CES this year, there were some that really stood out from the rest. From RGB keyboards on Chromebooks to portable laptops so thin... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2023-01-18 11:45:00 UTC ]
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#single charge
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Here’s what’s been going on with the site—plus some alternatives for accessing free e-books. Many a desperate college student has turned to Z-Library, a site for pirated e-books, as an alternative to expensive textbooks. But on Friday, the site suddenly went dark, sending students who relied on... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2022-11-04 18:00:00 UTC ]
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If this particular model of the Acer Aspire 5 looks familiar, it's probably because it's been sitting atop Amazon’s laptop bestseller list for months. It’s easy to understand why. With a list price of $350 but usually selling for closer to $310, this AMD Ryzen 3-powered Aspire 5 packs some... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2019-09-25 10:00:00 UTC ]
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#6-inch display
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Jared Harper made four straight free throws over the final 31 seconds to help Auburn clinch an 84-80 victory over No. 5 Tennessee on Saturday in the regular-season finale at Auburn, Ala. The Tigers (22-9, 11-7 Southeastern Conference) collected their fourth straight win and biggest of the season... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-03-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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#college basketball
A man who says he was defamed on Facebook by a fellow college student filed a lawsuit Friday against the woman in Los Angeles, alleging she falsely accused him of raping her. The plaintiff in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit is identified only as John Doe and the defendant as Jane Roe. He... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2017-10-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have donated $5 million to help undocumented immigrants attend college, Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2015-06-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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According to a new survey conducted by Hewlett Packard, 78% of college students prefer to use both print and digital textbooks. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-07-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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If you're looking for the satisfaction of finishing a great book in a day or two, check out these short audiobooks under 5 hours. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-05-06 10:37:37 UTC ]
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#great book
Black superheroes are popular onscreen thanks to the work of Black creators of comic book characters and stories that anticipated this racial reckoning moment. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-04-29 12:00:48 UTC ]
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#comic book
Take a virtual tour of some of the world's most haunted libraries, and learn the history behind the hauntings of these bookish spaces. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-11-02 11:30:00 UTC ]
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#libraries
Metro Detroit billionaire businessman Manoj Bhargava faces a lawsuit tied to his ongoing takeover bid of the former publisher of Sports Illustrated magazine.The lawsuit, filed last week in California in a Los Angeles County court, is brought by Ross Levinsohn, a veteran media executive and the... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2024-03-28 20:07:35 UTC ]
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Ah, 35, that mystical line between emerging writers and… old ones. Though I move ever further in the wrong direction from said line I am nonetheless happy to celebrate this latest crop of “young” writers, announced today by the National Book Foundation, as they contemplate the imminence of their... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-03-19 14:46:03 UTC ]
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A new mystery from the Queen of Irish detective fiction, a memoir by RuPaul, and a trippy, shifting narrative set in Prague all round out today's new releases. Which ones are you thinking of picking up? Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-03-05 12:30:00 UTC ]
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Murder at a school reunion, a memoir on motherhood, disaster bisexuals in love, and more of today's best book deals! Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-02-05 17:04:05 UTC ]
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