I just bought several cheap Dell laptops, and I amazed at the quality of hardware you can get for $1200 these days. While not exactly light, they are small, sturdy, solid-feeling, with 2GHz dual-core processors, really nice high-resolution displays, 1 GB of RAM, 7200 RPM hard drives, and a 4-hour battery life. Dual-processor laptops for $1200 - freaking amazing.
Latitude D620’s, for anyone curious.
You sure can. What’s even more amazing is that isn’t even considered a cheap laptop anymore. There are some pretty good ones around at $800 or even lower if you look long enough. Back in 1997 or so, I remember some expensive consultant walking in with a laptop he had to show everybody. IIRC, it was a Pentium I (maybe II although it doesn’t matter much) 200 mhz cutting edge consulting machine. He said his company paid $8000 a piece for them. I don’t think we will see those days again and just think it was only 10 years ago.