When shopping around for a low-cost notebook, particularly one you want to buy as a gift, you'll want to consider a low-cost netbook. If you want to get the most bang for your buck, look for the following specs:

Screen: While children and those with 20/20 vision can work comfortably with a 9-inch display, everyone else will appreciate a 10-inch screen.

RAM: Don't settle for any less than 1GB of RAM. 512MB will not cut it.

Operating System: To be fair, there are several choices here and some of the Linux flavors are easy to use. However, if you want to be sure you can use all your software and hardware on a netbook, you have to go for one with Windows XP. Whatever you do, don't buy a netbook with Vista as these slower systems just can't handle it.

Battery: You can save a fair amount of money by getting your netbook with a 3 or 4-cell battery, but you'll only get 2 to 3 hours of endurance. Go for a 6-cell and 4 to 6 hours of endurance if you can possibly afford it. The Samsung NC10, pictured at right, gets a full 6.5 hours of battery life.

Hard Drive: A 5,400 rpm hard drive offers a lot more capacity and often better write performance than the low-cost SSDs you'll find in most netbooks. Avoid anything with a 4,200 rpm or slower drive like the plague.

Wi-Fi: No need to get 802.11n. 802.11g should be more than sufficient.