4. What You Can Expect To Do With A $700 Notebook

Ratchet your expectations downward. With their lower power CPUs and limited memory, most under $700 notebooks are best suited for office applications such as those that are part of Microsoft Office: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and maybe Access. When more extensive calculations are involved as can be the case with Excel or Access, expect some delay before the screen is refreshed.

Don't expect to play sophisticated computer games on most of these computers. Few have the graphic processing power and features to support such games, though some of my recommendations do. Run a game like Doom 3 or F.E.A.R and, if you see anything at all, you'll most likely see jerky one or two frame per second "action." This is no fun at all.

Acer's Aspire 5040 AS5043WLMi notebook

You should have no trouble playing music CDs on almost any notebook in this price class. Except in rare cases you should also be able to watch DVD movies without jerky, jittery playback.

Again, go to a local store to check out any notebooks you're thinking of buying on the Internet. No amount of vendor claims to the contrary can guarantee any or all of the capabilities you're looking for in a notebook are actually there.