Lets get one thing out of the way right now and that is to answer the question of "Who has the best sub $500 laptop deal this Black Friday?"
Answer in order from
First place : Circuit City - Toshiba L25-S1193 $450 or $380<--will explain later Second place : WalMart - HP Pavillion ze2308wm $389 (Some may prefer this over the CC laptop) Third place : Best Buy - Toshiba L25-S1192 $380
Well we know of all the sub $500 laptops now so heres whats hot and whats not and what you need to know before deciding on which unit to buy. PLUS some unadvertised info that may get you $70 off the Circuit City laptop which IMO is the laptop of choice this BF followed very closely by the WalMart laptop.
BestBuy $380 Toshiba L25-S1192 Celeron M 1.5ghz 15" XGA screen (NOT the TruBrite screen) Graphics Card ATI RADEON® XPRESS 200M 256mb DDR2 ram 40gb hard drive (5400rpm) CD-RW/DVD combo Wifi Half-capacity 4-cell battery (1-1.5 max hour life) S-Video TV out only 90 day warranty ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Circuit City The laptop is NOT $199 its $450 or $380 with the Gift Card deal<--will explain later Toshiba L25-S1193 Celeron M 1.5ghz 15" XGA TruBrite Screen 512mb DDR2 ram 60gb drive (5400rpm) Graphics Card ATI RADEON® XPRESS 200M Wifi Half-capacity 4-cell battery (1-1.5 max hour life) S-Video TV out 1 year warranty
The laptop is $199.99 ONLY after you signup for 12 months of AOL. Its $449.99 otherwise. If you want to signup for 12 months of AOL dialup at 24/month the total cost of laptop + AOL will be $488. Here is how you will get it for $380. The laptop is advertised for $450 and you can get $250 off if you sign up for 12 months of AOL. Signup for 12 months of the $15/month AOL for Broad Band plan which will cost you $180 for the year. SO..$450 - $250 AOL sign up + $180 actual cost of the $15/month plan = $380 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WalMart $398 HP Pavillion ze2308wm AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6 Ghz 256 MB DDR SDRAM Memory 40 GB Hard Drive (4200rpm) Graphics Card ATI RADEON® XPRESS 200M CD-RW/DVD combo Drive Wifi 15" XGA screen Full capacity 6-cell battery <--unconfirmed 1 Year warranty ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Staplesalso has an ok deal which IMO is 4th place. Spec wise similar to the BB laptop but I don't think $80 more is worth the extra battery life and IMO Toshiba build quality is better. Plus this Acer was initally designed for a widescreen so what you have is a standard 15" screen on an unnecessarily wide laptop. Its still a decent deal though.
Acer 3613CLi Celeron M 1.5ghz 15" XGA screen 256mb DDR ram 40gb drive CD-RW/DVD combo drive Wifi Full capacity 8 cell battery (Will give you 2.5 hours)
The first 3 are the BEST sub $500 laptop deals this BF. There is no question about it.
Forget the other retailers Compusas laptop will cost you $550 and NOT $299 like the AD states because you have to pay for AOL. The best you can do is $480 IF you can get the $15/month AOL deal. Office Depot only has a base config "build-to-order" laptop that lacks a CD-RW, Wifi, and uses a slower CPU. The cost of upgrades and $50 shipping kills the deal.
A few things to note before you decide.
1. The Toshiba laptops have half-capacity batteries. You CAN get higher capacity batteries but how much they cost I dont know yet. The WalMart laptop so far is believed to have a full capacity 6-cell.
2. Extra ram is CHEAP. 256mb of DDR is only about $20-$25
I was looking for more information on a replacement battery on the Toshiba, since most of the complanist on that laptop is the battery life, but so far to no avail.
I thought L25-S1193 has 1 year warranty? L25-S1193 Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition, Intel® Celeron® M Processor 370, 512MB DDR2, 60GB (5400 RPM) PATA, CD-RW/DVD-ROM, 15.0” TruBrite™ XGA, ATI RADEON® XPRESS 200M, TV-Out, 802.11 b/g, CD Buttons, 1-year Limited Warranty
sunrise said:On the Circuit City flyer, I see some Toshiba laptop for $199, what is the deal there ? I cannot read the model # though , can anybody comment ?
Its the same laptop discussed. The price is $449.99. IF you signup for 12 months of AOL you get $250 off making it $199.99. AOL is $23/month for dialup although as discussed you MAYBE able to signup for the $15 AOL for Broadband plan which costs $15/month.
$450 - $250 AOL signup - $180 actual cost of the $15 AOL for Broadband plan = $380
Do NOT signup for the $23.95/month plan since the total cost of the laptop and AOL will be $488. But its really not a bad deal, an extra $38 for 1 year of dialup isnt bad. but who uses dialup??? Save your money IMO.
sunrise said:On the Circuit City flyer, I see some Toshiba laptop for $199, what is the deal there ? I cannot read the model # though , can anybody comment ?
It's actually $449 but there's another $250 if you sign up for a year of AOL. I read somewhere that the AOL plan must be a minimum of $24.99 a month. So the AOL discounts are bust unbless you need internet access.
DealEnthusiast said:Performance wise, can we say the HP AMD is the best among these sub-500 laptop? Assuming additional 256MB upgrade is added.
Looking quickly over some benchmarks performance difference between the 2 looks to be neglectable. Sure the Semprons based on the A64 are good but dothan cored Celeron Ms are nothing to sneeze at because they are in fact Pentium M cores with 1/2 the L2 cache enable. Still they have a whopping 1mb and benchmarks show that perfomance is nearly identical to Pentium M cpus. Its power consumption where pentium Ms are better not performance.
I will be getting 2 lappy's from WalMart before bf, then probably sit in line at bb to get 3 of theirs. I'd really like to get CC's but think I need more items at BB then CC. great post OP
actually the celeron M is a better processor then the sempron, just like the pentium m is a better processor then the athlon 64. Of course this is only true in some things....but in terms of laptop there is little comparison. The other advantages the Toshiba has at Circuit City is memory upgrade will be a lot cheaper it is very common for the 1 gig ddr2 chips to be under $100. Lastly, there is a way to mod the celeron M to make it run an 2 ghz instead of its default 1.5 ghz this will give you the equivalent performance of about a pentium M at 1.866 ghz. Also note the Celeron M's were initially pentium M's, however the pentium M's were bumped up to 2 mb L2 cache, so the 1 mb variants became celeron M.
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