Dell Inspiron 1545 (i1545-004ST)

For many families and school-bound teenagers, there's only room in the budget for a laptop with basic amenities. The Dell Inspiron 1545 (i1545-004ST) meets two of the most basic laptop requirements: Both its screen and hard drive are large enough to handle the gamut of multimedia tasks. It isn't a speed demon by any stretch, as its Intel Pentium-branded processor lags behind the mainstream Intel Core 2 Duos, but you won't hear a peep from frugal shoppers. Available at your local Staples for $650, this whopper of a bargain comes with a nice 15.6-inch widescreen, 320GB of storage space, and 4GB of memory—all of which should be enough to offset the processor's shortcomings.

As you'd expect at its price point, the Inspiron 1545 isn't cut from fancy metals like the Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch; its frame lacks even a touch of metal like the Acer Aspire 3935 (6504)'s brushed aluminum cover. Although the 1545's cover is matted to ward off smudges and fingerprints, the black plastic top is about as plain-looking as any other cheap laptop in this price range. (Dell offers a wider color selection, at an additional $40 over the basic black version, but you'd have to order a different configuration of the 1545 off the company's Web site.)

At 5.8 pounds, the Inspiron 1545 rides a fine line between portable mainstream and desktop replacement. It's not the heaviest, though, as comparable systems like the Gateway MD7801u (6.7 lbs) and HP Pavilion dv6t (1054CL) (6.1 lbs) weigh over 6 pounds. The Lenovo IdeaPad Y650 (5.5 lbs) and Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (5.3 lbs) are the lightest in its class, but will easily blow your budget. As you work your way inside the laptop, you might get distracted by the shiny palm rest area and the smudges it picks up. Past that, everything surrounding it is well-engineered: The full-size keyboard and the touchpad are both responsive, and the mouse buttons are silent.

The 1545's 15.6-inch widescreen represents the shift to the new 16-by-9 screen format, part of an industry-wide effort to conform to consumer television dimensions. You may not be getting more screen real estate than a comparable screen with a 16-by-10 ratio, but there's plenty of room to roam around. The ability to indulge in your digital hobbies such as photo editing, taking in a Netflix movie, or watching the latest YouTube video is a huge benefit of having a big screen. At this price, however, you're limited to a 1,366-by-768 resolution, which is consistent with systems like the Gateway MD7801u and HP dv6t. A higher resolution, like the one found in the Dell Studio XPS 16 (1,920-by-1,080), packs in more pixels for a better photo and movie experience.

The feature set is pretty cut and dried, and a bit below average. It lacks ports such as HDMI-Out (for video streaming) or FireWire, and the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard is not supported—just 802.11g. If you can look past these omissions, the 1545 has ample USB ports (3), a multi-card reader, a 2-megapixel webcam, and an ExpressCard slot for expansion devices. It comes with a dual-layer DVD burner for DVD playback and burning of most every disc format short of Blu-ray. Though you can't get this laptop with an internal Blu-ray reader from Staples, it can be added on for $150 if you buy this model on Dell's Web site. More importantly, the 320GB hard drive is very generous at this price and more than enough to store at least several years' worth of files.