You could try those new under-$400 ultrasmall notebooks, but that's not really the answer. In most cases, bargain-basement notebooks are meant to be adjuncts to another computer and don't offer enough speed, storage or substance to make it in the rough-and-tumble world of business.

The simple truth of the matter is that the notebooks that businesspeople carry with them need to be a cut above the rest. They need to be comfortable enough to use in a variety of places, have the power to churn through corporate databases, be effective Web surfboards and -- above all else -- be reliable and ready for work every day.

But while you may not be able to find a full-power notebook for $400, you can get a solid working system at a relatively low price. To test this idea, I put together a group of three business notebooks that cost $850 or less.

The systems were the $782 , the $800 Toshiba Satellite Pro L300D EZ-1003X and the $829 HP Compaq 6735b. All had 15.4-in. screens, midrange Intel or AMD processors and wireless networking capability. They all weighed between 5 lbs. and 6 lbs. and offered a reasonable amount of memory and hard drive space.

What was left out? Some cut corners on graphics, and some weren't yet up to the latest 802.11n standard in Wi-Fi networking. None had , and only the Compaq 6735b came with a fingerprint scanner, which some businesses prefer as security tools. Each came with a one-year warranty -- with these lower-cost notebooks, the gold-standard three-year warranty is not standard.