14 DAY TRIAL // On today's market, even netbooks are hard-pressed when trying to reach any sort of price all the way down to $300 or 200 Euro, but it looks like HP managed to get one of its 15-inch notebooks at that level.
With all the hype surrounding tablets, and their negative effect on laptop sales, companies have been revising their roadmaps and tactics.
Among other things, the decision was taken to drive netbook prices lower, until they averaged at under $350 and, then, went as low as $200 or less.
The reason these entry-level machines even managed it was the obvious fact that their hardware is low-end, although their processing and graphics did get some boosts over the past year.
Now, however, it appears that a full-fledged notebook from HP has begun to sell for less than most netbooks.
Dubbed Compaq Presario CQ56, it has a display size of 15 inches and, although some online stores have it at 317 Euro or so, others are giving it up for 199.90 Euro.
The central piece of the notebook's configuration is an AMD V140 processor, whose clock speed is of 2.3 GHz and which is complemented by the Radeon HD 4250 integrated graphics.
2 GB of RAM (random access memory) are present, along with a hard disk drive of 250 GB, plus Ethernet, WiFi and a DVD writer, among other things.
All in all, considering that 200 Euro is the price that Intel Atom, 1 GB RAM netbooks boast, the HP Compaq Presario CQ56 could be seen as a very convenient buy.
The things that do lack are a card reader and the HDMI, but they don't end up being used overmuch by most consumers anyway and the display should be large enough for videos to be enjoyable.
All in all, the 2.5 kilogram, 6-cell battery-using machine can very well be classified as the cheapest laptop on the European market at this point in time.