Compaq Presario v6316TU completed my search on value for money notebook PC. It came at a price tag of 37000. It has a Pentium dual core processor 1.7 ghz, Intel 945 GM chipset, 512 MB RAM, 2 USB ports, 80 GB SATA HDD, s video out, monitor port, DVD writer and a 15 inch WTFT screen.
There are other brands in the same price tag like Dell Inspiron with athlon processor, Acer with athlon processor. From my experience of using Acer notebook I can safely say that AMD is still not upto speed for the notebook technology. The acer notebook used to get heated up real fast. This Compaq notebook scores much better because of the intel chip.
Coming back to v6316TU, The back of the screen is ash black in colour and looks great.The keyboard is black. The SATA HD drive is rather a handicap if you are installing windows XP on it. The notebook comes with a free DOS but to install XP you will need the SATA drivers which needs to be installed from a floppy drive. So you will need an external USB floppy drive to install SATA drivers. Installing linux should be hassle free. I don’t know if they have fixed this in Vista. There are 2 USB ports but I wish it had more. The TFT screen is pretty good and makes watching movies a good experience. You also have a monitor port which can be used to connect to your external CRT monitor .The altec lancing speakers are by far the best I have seen on laptops. Trust me when I say it, I have used Dell inspiron, Sony viao, Acer NW series laptops but their built in speakers are very ordinary. This one stands out. The battery backup is pretty good and it complements the Intel chip. Machine is quite fast on 512 MB RAM and does not need any RAM upgrade. Overall v6316 works like a dream. If you are looking for a budget notebook PC this should be it.