The low budget Everex StepNote is a good addition on the cheap and normal specs laptops category, it only costs $600 but at least they are well spent, unlike the Gold Minox. It's the type of laptop for people that only want a machine to browse the web, a text processor and not much more, forget image/video editing with a program that requires plenty of RAM memory and a good processor.

With a 15.4-inch screen and an original 1290 x 800 resolution, it is suppose to display a good image quality but it lacks that good quality when watching DVDs. The dimensions and weight relationship is a strong point, it only weights 5.9 pounds and measures 14 x 10.5 x 1.3 inches. Features a 1.5Ghz Intel M370 processor with 512MB of RAM that can be expanded to 1GB for $60. There are built-in speakers that don't provide much volume so maybe using headphones is a good option, a dual-layer DVD burner is another one of the strong points, and lets not forget the 60GB on the hard-drive.

One thing that seems really bad is the battery life, the normal one that comes with the laptop is a 3-cell battery and gives 2 hours of life per full charge, an upgraded version (6-cell battery) might be worth the extra $70 that will give you one additional hour of battery. There are some keyboard keys that are small and awkward, the Enter key is suppose to be big or at least have a decent size but that doesn't happen with the Everex StepNote LM7WE.

In the end, it's the budget that counts and if yours is kind of low, this is probably the best solution out there.

Via LaptopMag