Lenovo 3000 N100

The good: High-end components for the price; competent performance; comfortable keyboard; display has very fine resolution; solid assortment of ports and connections, including media-card reader; robust system-management and help utility.

The bad: One-year warranty inferior to some business models'; small touch pad and shallow mouse buttons; tinny, soft speakers; few dedicated multimedia controls; lacks ExpressCard slot; unremarkable battery life.

The bottom line: In addition to a set of features and connections suitable for the small-business user, the Lenovo 3000 N100 delivers strong components and performance at a competitive price.

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Description: This configuration of the Lenovo 3000 is a 6.4-pound, general-purpose notebook computer. Compared to other mainstream notebooks on the market, it is relatively inexpensive at around $900. Has Wi-Fi (wireless connectivity) built-in. Features Intel media accelerator 950 graphics with 128MB of video memory.

Pros: Comes with Windows Vista Home premium and Microsoft Windows Vista OS, which is somewhat more favorable than some similarly priced notebooks. In fact, the typical cost of a product with a comparable set of OS is $1,420. Also, this notebook has 1680 x 1050 native screen resolution, which is somewhat higher than some similarly priced notebooks. By way of comparison, the average cost of a product with this high a native screen resolution is $1,630. This laptop boasts a memory stick slot, making it easy to swap digital images, wav clips, and other files with various handheld devices.

Cons: Has only 512 MB RAM, which is considerably less than some similarly priced notebooks. For example, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y510 , a 6.4-pound notebook at around $1, 000, has 4 GB RAM. Also, this notebook has only a 40GB hard drive, which is considerably smaller than some similarly priced notebooks. For example, the Gateway M-6846 , a 6.4-pound notebook at around $805, has a 320GB hard drive. Integrated graphics controllers that rely on shared video memory are sometimes an acceptable trade-off for budget-minded users.

Suitability: A general-purpose notebook, suited for general mobile computing. Comes with a DVD player for watching movies. Share pictures with friends on dial-up modems: put them on a disc with the CD burner in this notebook. Comes with office-grade word processing software -- capable of producing all the complex documents you may need to publish. With 128MB of dedicated video RAM, this machine will do OK with some games and multimedia applications, but will fall short of satisfying the serious gaming enthusiast. Use the bundled video software to edit movies uploaded from a digital videocam. Clean up your digital pictures with the photo editing software included with this computer. If you have a wireless network at home, wirelessly browse the Internet from any room in your house with this Wi-Fi enabled notebook.

Value: Given its relatively inexpensive price, this notebook has great features for the money. For example, when it comes to screen size, the average price of general-purpose products with a comparable screen size is considerably more -- right around $1,093. Generally, this economy-class model lacks sex appeal, but budget-minded consumers will like the low price.

Suggestions: (1) Given this device's Wi-Fi capability, you may want to get a wireless access point for your home, so that you can browse the Internet more conveniently from any room. (2) To get the most out of this laptop's Bluetooth capability, you could have a Bluetooth-enabled headset, PDA or other device, and be able to link it wirelessly to your computer within a range of 20-or-so feet inside the same room.