My mother needed a new laptop and I recommended her the same one I would have bought myself or my wife, that means the cheapest possible laptop with the most features for the money.

This HP shines at this price point and one thing that made me stay away from buying more and recommending HP/Compaq was the poor battery life.  Not anymore, this model has an industry leading up to 4 hours of battery life.

Key Factors for Choosing It:

• HDMI Out
• Radeon 4250 HD Graphics (no Intel, I hate Intel graphics)
• Price
• Card Reader
• Webcam Mic
• 4 Hour Battery Life
• Best Value Overall Performance vs Features
• AMD-V Hardware Virtualization
• Dual Core/High Performance AMD CPU
• 4Gigs of RAM
• 500GB HDD

You can get a great deal like this and anyone who knows the specs properly can too. For $399.99 CAD on sale you can't beat these features, typically they make you pay for more expensive laptops that offer little more for the high price just to get that builti-in cardreader and HDMI out you can pay hundreds more. 

This is a budget/value laptop but I don't see why you'd need to spend more, this laptop is powerful and can handle decent gaming with the ATI 4250 Graphics card.  It's not worth spending 2-3x more when this does the job well.

My philosophy with computer hardware is to spend the least amount of money but get the most for it (shop smart).  A dollar saved today is worth $2-3 down the road because of how far technology progresses.  That and I keep in mind that laptops don't often last long and weren't designed to (there's no way they couldn't find a better way to cool laptops and prevent a single vent from causing a motherboard meltdown).

Processor Processor Brand: AMD Processor Type: Athlon™ II; Processor Chipset: N/A Processor Speed: 2.2GHz Bus Speed: 3.2 GT/s Level 2 cache: 1MB Memory RAM: 4GB RAM expandable to: 8GB Memory Type (RAM): DDR3 Storage/Drives Hard drive size: 500GB Hard drive speed: 5400RPM DVD Drive: DVD-Super 8x Multi Double layer Blu-ray Disc Drive: No Burns DVDs: Yes LightScribe: Yes Screen Features Display Type: LED Display Size: 15.6" Screen resolution: 1366 x 768 Backlit display: N/A Expansion HDMI: Yes USB 2.0: Yes DVI (digital video interface): No Internet/Networking Ethernet: Yes Wireless/Wi-Fi: Yes, 802.11b/g/n Dial-up Modem: N/A Bluetooth Capabilities: No Graphics/Video Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4250; Dedicated Video Memory: 1789MB Shared Video Memory: N/A Software Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Edition Preloaded Software: Microsoft® Office 2010 starter(purchase of Product Key required to activate full suite) Battery Features Battery Type: Li-ion Battery Size: 6-cell Battery Voltage: 47WHr Battery Life: 4 hours Battery Charge Time: N/A Rechargeable Battery: Yes Accessories Mouse: No Speakers: Yes Built-in Microphone: Yes Cables: No Webcam: Yes Dimensions Height: 3.18cm(min H), 3.66cm (max H) Width: 24.6cm Length: 37.4cm Weight: 2.5kgs General Features UPC: 886111382446 Manufacturer's Part Number: XZ256UA#AB Product Warranty: 1-year

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