I am looking at the low-end Black Friday laptop offerings. My old IBM Thinkpad running 366MHz Intel Pentium II badly needs a replacement (yeah, I am that cheap ;-)). I will mainly use it for word processing, Internet browsing, and basic image editing (that pretty much sums up my midnight blogging :-)).
Here is a quick roundup of all promotions I have found around the forums and web sites. What do you think? I am leaning towards the Circuit City one since I don’t really need a 80GB hard drive. The only concern is the quality of these brands. I like my IBM laptop a lot, is Compaq going to be much worse?
| CompUSA |
Compaq Presario AMD Sempron 3300+ 15.4″ high-definition widescreen CD & DVD reader/writer 512MB DDR2 memory 80GB hard drive $399.99 (after $230 mail-in rebate) |
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| Best Buy |
HP Intel Centrino Technology Core Solo T1350 15.4″ widescreen CD & DVD reader/writer 512MB memory 80GB hard drive $379.99 (no rebates) |
Toshiba Satellite Intel Celeron M 420 533MHz FSB, 1.6GHz CPU 15.4″ widescreen CD reader/writer & DVD reader 512MB memory 60GB hard drive $249.99 (no rebates) |
| Circuit City |
Compaq Presario Intel Celeron M 420 15.4″ BrightView(TM) widescreen CD & DVD reader/writer 512MB DDR RAM 60GB hard drive free upgrade to Vista Basic $299.99 (after $100 mail-in rebate) |
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| Staples |
Compaq Presario Turion 64 Mobile Technology ML-28 15.4″ widescreen CD reader/writer & DVD reader 512MB RAM 60GB hard drive $399 (no rebates) |
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All stores open November 24, 5am except Staples which opens 6am
Here is a relevant discussion at FatWallet
Update 11/21: added unadvertised Best Buy Toshiba laptop
Circuit City one for sure! It is “good enough”, and cheapest amongst them all. It should run circles around your old IBM — well at least before you upgrade it to Vista Basic :)
While I agree that the old IBM thinkpads are very solid, the old Compaqs are not too bad. We used to buy them for our IT department, before we switched to Dell. Not sure about the new ones though.
I will have to stop by my local Circuit City tomorrow and get a hold of one of these Compaqs. A laptop is a very personal gadget and if say I don’t like how the keyboard keys click… no Compaq for me then. :-)
On top of that, it has to run silently so it doesn’t wake up my wife quietly snoring by my side (that is what she is doing right now).
Next, it has to stay cool, literally. My IBM produces so much heat that after an hour or so I can no longer hold it on my lap – it is just too hot!
As it turns out I have a lot of requirements for my future laptop and CPU/memory are far not the first in the list.