Making the Most of Your Laptop Under $300

To get the most your budget laptop there are a few tricks and add-ons you can get that will improve your laptop experience. One thing you can do is use the laptop what it is designed for. An add-on that you can get that will help out is an external optical drive. Lastly, utilize Windows 7 Homegroups to leverage your other computer’s hard drive space if yours is limited.

As with most laptops under 300 dollars they are designed for portability. Having a netbook or other mini laptop permanently at a desk means that you are missing out on so many other ways to enjoy your laptop. Taking a portable laptop outside so that you can enjoy the weather and still be able to update Facebook is one of the main reasons small laptops exist. Another great place is using a mini laptop is in bed, nothing beats relaxing warm under the covers and being able to watch movies on demand or updating your blog.

Because most budget laptops don’t have DVD drives you are going to need an external optical drive if you want to play one of your DVDs or install software from a disk. This can also come in handy if you need to use any of the recovery tools that comes with Windows that require booting from a disk. External optical drives are pretty cheap and can connect via any USB port. Make sure you pick a laptop with a microphone, so you can use it as digital voice recorder to save your memos using voice.

A big multimedia laptop

Another way to get more out of a netbook is by using network storage to house files if your hard drive space is limited. Small hard drives aren’t a given in $300 laptops but in $200 laptops you can run into space issues. The way to get around this is super convenient given Windows 7 built in homegroups. Homegroups are essentially shared folders that can be located on any computer on the home network and then be accessed by any other computer in the network. Although they are super easy to access they are password protected, so you needn’t worry about uninvited guests.

Getting the most out of your bargain laptop can make a $300 laptop feel like a much better laptop when used properly and given the proper add ons.