Notebook Hunter

For $749 the Compaq Presario CQ41-209TX is a great value notebook by any measure. Foremost in its specs is an Intel Core i3 330M processor. This is the lowest-end Intel Core i3 processor, but it’s still faster than any of the previous generation Intel Core 2 Duos, and vastly better on speed and battery life than the Pentiums and Celerons that you often find in low-priced notebooks. The ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics card isn’t as good in comparison, being one of ATI’s lowest end offerings. It’ll still run games like Modern Warfare 2 on low settings, and has inbuilt capacity to playback high definition video using graphics card acceleration, but high-end gaming is out. Typical general computing like browsing large photo libraries should be no problem. One highlight of the CQ41-209TX is that it has an inbuilt HDMI port, which means you can connect it up to your plasma or LCD TV using a single cable and play videos directly to the TV from the laptop.

Everything else is on the good side of average for the price bracket; a DVD burner, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. It's about average on weight (lighter than some notebooks, even) at 2.36KG, but at 4cm thick, it casts a chunky profile – this is not a notebook that's trying to be slim-line. Its other dimensions are 33.4 cm width and 23.7 cm depth.

The 14.1in screen isn't the best – it only has a resolution of 1280x800 pixels, whereas 1366x768 is usually the lowest we see on full-size notebooks. As a result, you might notice the display is a touch grainier than you might expect. But as you can see from the numbers, it’s not a vast difference.

We thought it was a good deal
(http://apcmag.com/notebookhunter/deals/compaq-presario-cq41-209tx-most-affordable-core-i3-based-all-rounder.htm) when it was priced at $896 back in March, so $749 is a great price for what you're getting.

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