For those who prefer HP, the Pavilion DM1z laptop is a lightweight budget laptop that includes an 11.6-inch screen. Priced starting at $449, the laptop weighs about 3.24 pounds (1.47 kilograms) and can run for around five hours on a single six-cell battery charge. It also includes a webcam and a 5-in-1 media card reader, and supports up to 5GB of memory and 500GB of storage.

A is priced at $524.99. The configuration includes an AMD Turion II Neo dual-core processor K625 running at 1.5GHz and AMD's ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 integrated graphics. It comes with 3GB of RAM and 320GB of storage.

Acer's Aspire One laptops

Acer in late June announced two new Aspire One laptops with low-power AMD chips. The AO521 is just under an inch thick, comes with a 10.1-inch screen and weighs about 2.75 pounds, making it more like a netbook. The AO521 is priced starting at US$349.99. The AO721 netbook has an 11.6-inch screen, is slightly heavier and is priced beginning at $429.99. The laptops include integrated ATI Radeon HD graphics to display high-definition multimedia content, and come preloaded with the Windows 7 OS.