The Acer Aspire 5542 is affordable yet has very modern features: a powerful AMD Athlon II M300 64-bits dual-core processor running at 2.0GHz, 1Gb of RAM (plan to expand this to 2Gb immediately...) and a 160Gb SATA hard disk. The graphical subsystem is powerful: a bright 16" widescreen running at 1366 x 768 (great for watching movies and indulging in some games) powered by an ATI Radeon HD 4200 GPU. There is even an HDMI connector to connect the Aspire 5542 to an LCD TV and get excellent quality output (this is ideal when watching a Blu-Ray quality movie for instance.) The Aspire also has a DVD writer, gigabit Ethernet, Wifi, a modem, a card reader, a web cam, comes with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Basic (and Linux runs fine too) and has a three year warranty.

A laptop with excellent value for money should be an all rounder: capable of being used to browse the web, to do complex calculations in a spreadsheet and to watch a movie in HD format... at the same time. The Dell Inspiron 1545 does all that with aplomb. Its 2.20GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, its 3Gb of RAM and 320GB SATA hard disk form a solid base. Its ATI Mobility Radeon HD4330 provides 3D acceleration for the 15.6" 1366x768 LED glossy widescreen and this allows 3D games to run fine. The Inspiron also has a DVD writer, a webcam and Wifi as well as all the usual ports found on computers. Windows 7 Home Premium is provided but Linux runs fine too if needed. Interestingly, the Dell Inspiron 1545 comes with 5 years of warranty. Highly recommended.