Published on 05/16/2007
HP has taken a good look at the budget notebook user market and devised the HP 530 as the company's solution. Taking over the reins from the 510, the 530 might be small on price but it doesn't skimp on the features to leave you tapping your fingers on the table each time you open a Word document. The 530 features a 15.4" display, 512MB RAM, an 80GB hard drive, WiFi connectivity, a DVD/CD-RW combo drive, and the Windows Vista operating system. I'd suggest you bump up the RAM to at least 2GB while keeping the rest of the specifications intact in order to extract the best experience from Microsoft's latest OS. You can get the limp Celeron version for $549, while the more expensive $699 model gives you a Core Duo T2050 processor.