Shopping for a laptop under $600 is a bit like going for the half-priced, late-afternoon sushi special at your local deli--there's a certain risk versus reward calculation that has to occur. While it's not going to win any awards for flair or style, this anonymous-looking 15-inch retail model from Hewlett-Packard offers the best combination of features and performance in its price range.
Dan Ackerman
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications.
"Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Shopping for a laptop under $600 is a bit like going for the half-priced, late-afternoon sushi special at your local deli--there's a certain risk versus reward calculation that has to occur. While it's not going to win any awards for flair or style, this anonymous-looking 15-inch retail model from Hewlett-Packard offers the best combination of features and performance in its price range.
The $599 HP G60-235DX (part of our Winter 2009 Retail Laptop Review Roundup) has a 16:9 display, an Intel Dual-Core CPU (many budget systems use slower AMD chips), and even squeezes in a separate number pad.
