The 14.1-inch Dell and Lenovo, Dell Inspiron 1520, HP Pavilion dv9500t, Dell XPS M1330, and both Apples all had batteries that lasted 3 hours or more in our tests. All of these systems are speedy and feature-rich. Budget systems and the slim-and-light include 1 gigabyte of RAM, a 120- to 160GB hard drive, and a DVD burner. Workhorse systems include 2GB of RAM.


14.1-inch budget

Dell Inspiron 1420 with Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor $1,075
Lenovo 3000 N200 14.1-inch with Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor $900


15.4-inch budget

Dell Inspiron 1521 with AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-50 $845
Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 with AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-52 $720


15.4-inch workhorse

Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch with Intel 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo processor $2,000
Dell Inspiron 1520 with Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor $1,095
Lenovo ThinkPad R61 with Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor $1,110


17-inch workhorse

Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch with Intel 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor $2,800
Dell Inspiron 1720 with Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 processor $1,595
HP Pavilion dv9500t with Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 processor $1,150, CR Best Buy


13.3-inch slim-and-light

Dell XPS M1330 with Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 processor $1,680