The Everex StepNote VA4101M is a cheap, budget laptop with a big display, good and speedy HDD and includes a DVD burner, but it has a low end processor, very low battery lifetime. If you just want Windows Vista, this laptop is the cheapest way to get it, at just $500.

It has a low-end Intel Celeron M processor and just 512MB of RAM, making it a basic laptop,capable to run no advanced tasks and we can’t even talk about gaming. It is basic in all ways, having a standard keyboard, with a touch pad, two mouse buttons and a power button.

Of course the connectivity and networking are also lacking some ports, with just three USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet ( not gigabit ), VGA output, 802.11a/b/g WiFi and it lacks FireWire.

Running Windows Vista Basic is not quite recommended on the 512MB of RAM featured. Everex took a bad decision with the memory, because 512MB more wouldn’t increase the price very much. It also sports a Intel Celeron M 410 1.6Ghz CPU, a 60GB HDD @5,400RPM and a DVD burner. Unfortunately, the configuration is fixed and you can’t configure anything.

The StepNote VA4101M has a large display for it’s price, which makes it great for watching movies or surfing the web. The resolution is not the best, at 1,280×800 on it’s 15.4″ display, but reasonable.

This laptop isn’t designed for running Photoshop, encoding videos, gaming, any advanced tasks or multitasking, but for surfing the web, plying movies and music and all basic job for a laptop. It uses a Via Chrome9 graphics chip, that shares 128MB of the system’s memory.

It’s battery lifetime, as Everex states, is from 90 to 120 minutes, but it seems it doesn’t last more than 60 minutes.  The StepNote VA4101M comes with a 1 year warranty, with 24/7 toll-free phone support, along with the FAQ pages, email support and a forum. Everex’s website has great informations and downloads for every laptop, including StepNote VA4101M, which is great.