First Sub-$500 Vista Laptop

Everyone knows that Vista is out, and if you're an early adopter on a budget, Everex is hoping that you'll check out their new laptop. Their Stepnote VA4101M is the first sub-$500 laptop with Windows Vista. As you would imagine from a laptop in this price range, the specs are nothing to get excited about, sporting a Celeron M clocked at 1.46Ghz and 512 MB DDR2. Since Vista is known to be something of a resource hog, you can upgrade the RAM to 2GB.

You also get a lot of the other basics like a DVD burner, 60GB hard drive, and 802.11b/g wireless. With basic hardware like this, one tends to wonder how well Vista Home Basic will run. At least running Home Basic it won't have to try and keep up with features like the media center and Aero. You can find the Stepnote VA4101M at Wal-Mart.

Everex Stepnote VA4140M [via laptoping.com]