Laptop Thoughts: An Assortment of Back-to-School Notebooks

"While tablets are all the rage, students looking for a physical keyboard, gobs of storage, and enough processing muscle for serious multitasking should still make a laptop their primary computing device. But which is the right notebook for your budget?"

A short but useful review of some back-to-school recommendations for "student" notebooks, grouped by price. The review starts out with several notebooks that I'd consider to be "super netbooks" in the 3.2 to 3.5-pound class, and $379 and $479 respectively. Systems get progressively larger (except for the MacBook Air) and more expensive, culminating in two large desktop-replacement class notebooks, a Toshiba Qosmio with a 17.3-inch screen at $1499 and an even larger Acer Aspire with an 18.4-inch screen at $1599. Lots of options, and a good overview if you're looking for a new notebook. Several in the review have backlit keyboards, one of my requirements, and you'll find USB 3.0 and WiDi too!