Want to be thinker? Try Thinkpad

The IBM ThinkPad R500 may be their lower cost business class laptop, but it can be configured for under $750 with certain conditions. This makes for a very specialized systems with a good number of limitations on it. One area where IBM didn’t compromise the ThinkPad R500 is on the processor. It uses the new Centrino 2 package that includes the GM45 chipset and a Core 2 Duo P8400 dual core processor that puts other budget laptops to shame in terms of computing power.

But, if you need a really fast machine and aren’t necessarily concerned about storage space, having a DVD burner or even the software package, then the ThinkPad R500 may be a system to consider. IBM’s ThinkPad R series has been about affordable business class laptops. It retains most of the ThinkPad’s legendary durability and design that can’t be matched by other budget systems.

They even managed to include faster DDR3 memory in this platform. The downside to this is that it only comes with a single gigabyte of memory limiting the overall performance of the OS without upgrading. The new R500 isn’t as inexpensive as the previous generations due to the SL series, but it is still possible to get one configured for under $750. To do this, it pretty much comes with the bare minimum configuration available on the platform.