You get what you pay for with notebooks.
Generally speaking, the low priced entry level notebooks won't last very long. They're fairly sluggish when bought brand new. This especially goes for the models sold in Wal-Mart and other retail outlets that are loaded to the gills with crapware to subsidize the ridiculously low price. After a couple of years worth of typical use, system updates and "progress" in computer software advancement the system becomes a real headache to use.
If the buyer is on a strict budget he's often stuck with having to pick the least of the various evils in the entry level market segment. OTOH, the buyer must consider the work he is going to do with the machine. If it's going to be used for business or anything else important an entry level machine may be counter-productive.
I just retired an old Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook. I got 6 years of heavy use out of it, which seems to be above average. It's motherboard embedded hard disc controller started going on the fritz. I spent a bit into the higher end area with that one, but had to in order to use the notebook for graphics tasks. I replaced it with a new Core i7 2720QM equipped Dell XPS 15 L502 notebook. The new system is far more powerful and cost a little less than what I paid for the Inspiron 6000. Good thing too. I had to upgrade my Adobe Creative Suite software.
Here's my 2¢ about tablets:
Devices from the iPad to various smart phones are very portable and convenient. But they are only designed for media consumption. Web surfing, reading e-mail, watching YouTube videos, etc. all fall under this category. They are not geared for doing real task-oriented computing work, such as writing a term paper for a college class or editing financial spread sheets for work.
I can read a detailed e-mail note on my Android phone but if I need to type more than a simple response to it I'm going to compose that response on a real computer equipped with a real keyboard. My phone's Swype keyboard is good enough to send a tweet or Facebook status update. It sucks when typing paragraphs. The iPad isn't any better in this regard even though it is larger.
All of us have lots of files stored on various kinds of media (hard discs, optical discs, flash drives, etc.). Desktop and notebook computers are much better than tablets and smart phones when it comes to accessing and organizing all of that stuff.
For some people, an iPad might be all they need. I personally have no use for one since the overlap between my notebook and smart phone eliminate the need for such a device.
