Can cheap notebooks cut costs?

It's gotten to the point where I don't even want to listen to the financial news in the morning -- as soon as the market report comes on, I'm tempted to cover my ears and start singing, "Oh, what a beautiful morning," as loud as I can to drown it out. 

The smart thing to do these days is to economize. That means dialing down on travel (if you haven't done it already because of those awe-inspiring gas prices); trying to be really, really nice to your boss so you won't find yourself on the next layoff list; and -- oh, yeah, considering cheaper tech so that you can leave more of your bucks under the mattress.

Happily, there are a number of cheaper systems available these days. If you don't need to do much more than surf and e-mail, you could even try to make do with one of the new netbooks that have become so popular these days, although most of us who depend on tech for our livelihoods won't find them good enough for in-office day-to-day work. (It is true, however, that netbooks like my ancient -- it's a year old now, which is nearly decrepit in computer years -- Asus EeePC is useful for doing work during commutes and at odd times, which comes under the category of "impress your boss with your industriousness.")

You can, however, make do very nicely with full-fledged laptops that, if not quite at the under-$400 range of the netbooks, are under $850 -- which ain't bad for a a machine with a reasonable processor, a hard drive with at least 120GB of space, and a nice number of ports. No, you don't get Bluetooth or the fingerprint scanner, and it's going to be a little more weighty than more expensive notebooks (and a lot more weighty than, say, the MacBook Air). But it will be useful, and useable -- and cheap.

Are you guessing that we've published a review roundup that investigates three of these inexpensive notebooks, and that I'm now touting it? Of course we have, and of course I am. But it is true that individuals, small businesses, and corporations are going to be looking for ways to cut down on costs. And I'd much rather it involved cheaper systems, cloud computing, and/or open source applications than, say, layoffs.