Cheapest Yet Fastest Computer?

Each model has specific features and are priced accordingly.

You need to ask yourself a few questions and then find a laptop that matches your answers.

What do you plan to do?  Surf the web?  Office work?  Email?  play games?  What sort of games?  Play music?  Play videos?  Store music or videos?  Need wireless connectivity?

The answer to each is a piece of the puzzle.  Expect to pay for each feature.  The cheaper the laptop is the worse some aspect will be, be that the screen, the speed, or the amount of storage.

For speed the CPU needs to be fast and should be multi-core.  AMD verses Intel is a personal choice they are both equivalent.

For doing a lot at once you want a lot of memory (RAM)

For storing music, video, or lots of other files you need a big hard disk.  Hard disk speed affects the overall speed.  Laptops typically use 5400 RPM disks which are slow.

Will you want wireless capability for Internet?   What type?  For general access you need 802.11 A/B/G, for future use you may want 802.11 N or WiMax.

Expect to pay between $500 and $3000 depending on features for a decent laptop and you can go over $10000 for really high end ones.  I use a $200 Acer One Netbook for general work.  It's no Cray super computer but it does all my day to day stuff when I'm not at my desktop PC.  I haven pay a few low end games on it .