Compaq Presario CQ50Z- AMD Athlon(TM) X2 Dual-Core) QL-60 (1.9GHz) , 15.4" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1280 x 800), 2 GB DDR2, NVIDIA GeForce 8200M G , 120 GB SATA HD, SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support , Microphone + Webcam , 802.11b/g WLAN, Windows Vista Home Basic
My only real complaint about this laptop is after 8 months of bumps and bangs the AC adapter cable has gotten noticeably loose; however it still charges the battery reliably.
My goal was to take the cheapest laptop I could get and stuff it with the most ram and the biggest hard drive, and it worked.
The laptop gets the job done and has already survived a couple of airport trips. I like the glossy screen, which while all newer laptops have this is a major improvement over older screens that had trouble with glare. The built in SD card reader has been a real bonus, and the laptop generally runs fairly cool with about 1-1 1/2 hour battery life. (Although on energy saver the screen gets very dim when on the battery.)
The video card is a Geforce 8200m and can play some games, and it has no trouble with Youtube videos or movies. You are stuck with Vista on this, but turning everything down to "Classic" settings makes it a fairly speedy machine.
It would have been nice to have PCMCIA slots and a docking station, but you can't have everything, especially at this price.
