The first laptop I ever purchased from Dell was an Inspiron 15R. The Inspirion 15 starts at about $399, making it ideal for first-time laptop users, students, and anyone else looking for a sturdy, dependable, entry-level model. Fully customizable, the Inspiron line features 2.26Gh Intel Core processors – fast enough for any computing the average user does and comes preloaded with Windows 7. The basic Inspirion comes with 2GB single-channel memory, but I recommend upgrading tot he 4GB dual-channel, as I find it adds significantly to the performance/speed of the laptop. All Inspirions come with a massive 320GB hard drive, Intel HD Graphics card and 5-hour battery, although for heavy users you may want to upgrade the battery or purchase an additional one. It’s one of the best cheap Dell laptops you could buy.

The next laptop I purchased from Dell was my netbook, or as Dell calls them, “Minis”. These are by far the best cheap laptops out there. I got mine refurbished for under $200 on Dell’s outlet store; a new model starts at $299. The thing I absolutely LOVE about the netbooks are the small size. I can tuck it into my diaper bag or purse whenever I go out – it’s perfect for web browsing and or writing that essay I’ve been trying to postpone. I have to admit I jumped the gun a bit and bought one of the first Mini 8′s. With an 8GB hard drive, it was virtually impossible to run anything on it. However, all the Minis now come with a minimum 160 GB hard drive so that’s no longer an issue. That being said, the Minis aren’t great on power. You really can’t have any apps on them or they tend to run at snail’s pace, so make sure you have another laptop or desktop to run your beefier programs on because the Minis come with a mere 1GB of RAM. However, if you are looking for a truly portable laptop for web-browsing, the Mini is what you want.

If you are looking for a powerful, and I mean powerful laptop, check out Dell’s Alienware line. My most recent purchase, the Alienware laptop was my husband’s last Christmas present – he was not disappointed! Built for gaming, the Alienware 15X is available with a Intel® Core™ i7 940XM Quad Core Processor, the fastest laptop processor in the world. You can also pack in a whallopping 8GB of dual-channel (yes, I said dual) memory and an available 256GB solid-state hard drive. The 15X comes with a beautiful HD screen, and with an available 1 GB GDDR3 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX video card, you can make sure all your graphic-intense games look great on it. The 15X starts at $1350, but with available options can top out at well over $3000. For hard-core gamers, it’s a small price to pay for premium performance.

Dell laptops are available nationwide at retailers such as Walmart, Target, and Best Buy. You can also customize your laptop online (their Studio line is available in 200+ designs) at dell.com. If you are truly looking for a great deal, check out their online outlet. You can get brand-new and refurbished laptops at a fraction of the cost, so if that costly system you’ve been eyeing has been alluding you, you’ll definitely want to check them out.

Many computer companies will refurbish computers and sell them for a discounted price. The company Apple is well known for this. These computers are sent back to the companies, fixed, wiped clean of any viruses and personal data from the previous user, and sold. Something to take into consideration is that when buying these cheap laptops, most times they are sold without a warranty. Sometimes this is a deal breaker for some people and others are okay with this. It all depends on your comfort with the brand.

Buying a slightly older model -
When looking for a computer, sometimes older is better. Many computers these days have features on them that are useful to more tech savvy people. If you are not one of these people or simply use your computer to browse the internet or simple things like that, then you don’t need the extra bells and whistles that these computers come with. The HP computer brand is a good computer to do this with. They are constantly releasing a new computer model every 4 to 6 months so if you bought an older model, you wouldn’t be as behind on the newest technology. Most times, computer stores sell the older models of cheap laptopsfor a discounted price. Take advantage of this and find a good deal on a new but, older computer, that will most likely suit you better.

When offered a rebate, use it! Nowadays, so that you will buy from their stores, most offer some sort of reimbursement program or rebate offer. They tell you that as long as you buy a computer and some accessory, such as a laptop bag or skin to cover it, they will give you a card that you can mail in to get anywhere from 50 to 200 dollars back. Most of the time this works out in your favor. You get a new model laptop, an accessory, and you end up getting it cheaper than you would before. Many computer brands such as, HP and Compaq offer this.

Naturally I think the best place to start is online. Why is that exactly? Well, it’s simple. You can often get the best deals online due to the fact that these online stores have very little overhead. They don’t have a building they have to pay for every month, they simply have hosting. They don’t have scads of employees to work cash registers and stock the shelves, either. They can make a profit while offering drastically better deals than the stores, allowing them to offer you some really outstanding deals.

Naturally I don’t think that you should just go off to the first site you find online. You need to be careful whenever dealing with anything online, particularly when you’re giving out your credit card information. Certainly most are honest businesses looking to do good by their customers, but even then, I think you should stick to the sites that are already well established when buying cheap laptops and notebooks on sale. Those would typically be sites such as Tiger Direct, New Egg, and any of the large manufacturer’s sites (such as Dell, Apple, HP, Toshiba, etc.). I’m certain that there are some other great sites, but it’s better to be safe than sorry!

In my humble opinion, Tiger Direct has always been the best online store for finding laptops on sale. It’s a store that’s been around since before the internet became popular; in fact, the store itself has been around for 20 whole years. That’s even pre-AOL if you can believe that! Their customer service has always been top-notch, and you can be assured of getting a good product. They also sell some very cheap refurbished laptops, many of which offer savings of up to 50%. New Egg also offers some great products, so definitely search both before you run off to the store.

Should you not find what you need online (not likely!), you might try going to a normal store for your laptop needs. The best brick and mortar store in my opinion is Fry’s Electronics. This store doesn’t exist everywhere; it’s mostly a west coast USA establishment, but if you can find one near you, it’s almost as good as going online. Their selection and prices are unbeatable compared to stores such as Best Buy, Staples, etc. They don’t even compare.

So, there you have it everyone! Today was admittedly a basic overview of where to find laptops on sale, but it should have been a solid primer for you whenever you decide to buy a laptop for yourself. Thanks for reading!

Brent is the author of http://www.refurbishedlaptopsguide.com.

Such deals are usually available all year long, especially when a new line of devices is announced and retailers try to get rid of old stocks. However, the best sales offers can be found during late November and December, the period officially called “Winter sales season”.

Regular laptops now run from around 400 bucks to as high as 3 to 5 thousand bucks, for the highly performing gaming rigs (like Alienware). It’s a vast range and anyone can find something suitable in between. Expensive laptops might get price cuts from time to time (significant I might say), but they’ll still remain pricey.

Standard and cheap laptops however can drop from their regular $500-$600 bucks for instance, to as low as $350-$400. I am expecting the biggest drops on November 27th this year, during Black Friday 2009 day. You might be able to get some very good Black Friday laptop sales offers that day, especially as early birds (products only available early in the morning, as “baits” to lure people in stores) . These deals however run out incredibly fast, and you might have to get in lines early in the night and fight some angry shoppers to buy the most popular laptops for sale.

Online webstores offer good bargains on laptops too. I would suggest scooping Dell’s or HP’s homepages on Black Friday and the week just before Christmas if you want to profit from the price cuts. Keep an eye out for cheap Dell laptops as they’re usually a good bargain.

Also, if you want, there’s the alternative of the smaller cheaper notebooks called netbooks. You could get some of the best such netbook computers for around $300 bucks, and they are good enough for most standard applications, while being very light and offering incredible battery life (around 6-7 hours).

Last but not least, you can go for refurbished laptops. They are usually 20 to 40 % discounted, but might have minor scratches and faults and come with only up to 6 month warranty.

In the end, I’m pretty sure there will be some very very good deals on laptops in the following two months. It will be just up to you to be able to profit from them and get the desired product for the desired price.

*This is a guest post on Laptops On Sale. *

A refurbished unit is in a sense a used unit, but before you say “I won’t buy one of them”, I want you to know that I wouldn’t want to buy a used laptop either. It could have internal damage from daily use and abuse, but a refurbish unit is a laptop that has been returned to the store and the store ships it back to the manufacturer.

The manufacturer will bring that unit back to the condition that it was at when it was brand new. They will go ahead and wipe the hard drive clean and re-format it. They will also remove all scratches from the unit. Next they will inspect each and every button on the unit as well as the multi-functional operations of the keys. Test the DVD and run programs to see how the do. check the battery to make sure that it passes the same levels that it needed when it was first built.

The reason is I am suggesting you check out reconditioned laptops is in most cases they’re cheaper than the new laptops on sale. If you’re looking for very cheap laptops, you should take time to check them out. There are many websites out there that offer refurbished laptops and computer cheaper than what you will find on Dell or Gateway.

That’s right in most cases you can save a fortune on getting a refurbished laptop. Keep in mind though that there are some sites out there that are not as reputable as others. As always there are people out there that will take advantage of you.