Wal Mart and the $400 laptop
posted Nov 1st 2005 10:30AM
Looks like Wal Mart's one-upping itself from it's sub-$600 laptops last year; looks like in 2005 you're going to be able to get a $400 laptop from the 'Mart, and a not too terrible one, at that (AMD 2800+ Sempron, 256MB RAM, 40GB drive, 15-inch screen, CD-RW/DVD). We're sure they're making like $3 on this thing, so come Black Friday (when they're expected to sell in stores alongside their $400 desktop brethren) don't be surprised if you're in a super long line for a 12-pound monster of a laptop with a 25 minute battery life. But wow, what a stocking stuffer. At this rate, by 2008 you'll be getting paid by rebate to take these damned things off their hands, as they'll be just another loss-leader to get your ass into the store on the worst shopping day of the year.
A great flood of noobs will strike the web with such a force that we will all be sharing corrupt mp3s soon
I don't see how they could possibly be heavy with that low-calibre hardware in them.
oMg.
That laptop has more RAM and more hard drive space than my computer!
No one has mentioned the OS, yet. I am willing to bet that it's some flavor of Linux which isn't bad for some of us but for others... For an extra $100 , an OEM copy of XP Home still wouldn't make for a bad price on a laptop.
I am looking forward to buy an after-Christmas sale laptop in the $400-600 range with twice that amount of RAM. For a mp3/word processing/that's it user like myself, these cheap laptops are perfect.
JGEMBERTON it says that it has Windows on it in the article. Also this price isn't that insane, I bought an Acer Laptop Sempron 3000+, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HD with 15" Screen from Circuit City for about 450 after rebates. I bet others have similar deals during the Holidays.
I did a search on hp.com for the HP ze2308wm (wm=wall mart) and it showed a spec sheet that inclueds XP Home/SP2. IMO this is about the best notebook deal if its real.
ops wal-mart not wall mart
I'll stick to $2700-$3000 ThinkPads :)
I got my T41 2 years ago, and its specs still hold up pretty well... 1.7 Pentium M, 512MB, 80GB, wifi, blueooth, weighing in at 5 pounds.
...just think...you could buy about 7 of these laptops for the price of one of yours...thats like one for each room of the house lol
Looks like the folks at WallyWorld have learned from the Ghost of Christmas past. Nobody cares about $19.96 cashmere sweaters, give 'em 15" LCD TV's for $194.00, portable DVD players for $79.86, HP Photosmart M415v 5.2MP Digital Camera w/ Instant Share for $148.76 or my favorite, the Cinderella Solstice Roadster Ride-On for $199.44.
Looks like a very GREEN Christmas for Wal-Mart.
Anybody got real numbers on the battery life. I'm sorry but a laptop with only 25mins battery life is a portable desktop w/ tether.
I quite honestly wouldn't touch a laptop under a grand. Its not that I'm snooty and an elitist. The simple fact is you get what you pay for and $10 says a sub grand laptop will get you 6 months before something dies on it, blows up, or just starts acting funky. I believe quality will eventually make it into the sub thousand dollar laptop but today aint the day.
Why do so many people on this site take what they read so literally? Get a clue!
According to the details on the Black Friday site, the laptop is an HP ZE2308WM:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=c00521954
Not a bad looking laptop for $398
The spec sheet also shows it comes with both Works and Money as well as CD authoring software. It maxes out at 1 GB of RAM and states the 256MB it ships with is a single DIMM. Not too shabby for a starter machine. I may pick one up for my mom.
"Why do so many people on this site take what they read so literally? Get a clue!"
Agreed. 12 lbs? 25 min? After reading so much Engadget sarcasm, don't you think that these numbers are a bit exaggerated?
The funny thing is, I'm sure that the Engadget team is trying really hard to make the numbers as ridiculous as possible to make it sound bogus, and people still fall for it.
I got a 399 laptop in the UK a few months ago (for those of you in the US, we are reguarly ripped off for electronics as, despite the pound being worth about 1.7-1.8 US dollars, the exchange rate appears to be 1=$1, so this would equate to $399).
If its anything like this you can look forward to the following features at this price point: 2.5 hours battery life, 15 inch screen, 802.11g wifi, 40gb hard drive, 1.4Ghz Celeron M, 256meg ram (takes upto gig), cdrw/dvd combo drive and windows xp (albeit home edition). Dunno if you will get something that decent though - maybe we aren't so ripped off in the UK after all...we'll see.
There has to be a catch somewhere on this. Maybe non-removeable battery? also, i'm thinking that is $400 after a few rebates.
So did the Linux laptop fail?
Surur
"The funny thing is, I'm sure that the Engadget team is trying really hard to make the numbers as ridiculous as possible to make it sound bogus, and people still fall for it."
Weighing in at an extremely portable 42lbs and a battery life of 1/2 of ten minutes. The Lappy 486 by Compy.
I have the sub-$600 Wal-Mart lappy and it's not a bad machine. Battery life isn't stellar, but again not bad at all for the price. I'm using it with Ubuntu Linux and the wireless works fine (for those of you interested).
Again, if you can afford better, by all means go for it, but for an inexpensive beater, this one definitely gets the job done. Lappy is Trogdor-approved (anyone need my unused copy of XP?)
This sounds like a good laptop for connecting to a home network and surfing the internet!
lol @ Justin.
Does it come with DOS?
sb_email.exe
""Why do so many people on this site take what they read so literally? Get a clue!"
Agreed. 12 lbs? 25 min? After reading so much Engadget sarcasm, don't you think that these numbers are a bit exaggerated?
The funny thing is, I'm sure that the Engadget team is trying really hard to make the numbers as ridiculous as possible to make it sound bogus, and people still fall for it."
Duh, I can only assume that you're refering to my post since I was the only one that mentioned the battery life before this point.
I'm sorry if my post confused ya but I think it was obvious to all that the 25mins & 12lbs was sarcasm. I was asking if anybody knew what the real life was. Especially since Black Friday had put ze2308mw instead of ze2308wm and when I did a quick google I only found a referrence back to Black Friday. Now that I can google the correct item I see that the battery is rated at about 43WHr which on this machine should be good for 3-4hrs.
In addition to that great value. You can snag a 15" LCD for $194 or $88 Moto RAZR from Cingular. http://www.bfads.net/adscans/BF2005-WalMart.pdf
I don't see what the big fuss is all about, you can get a similar laptop from Dell for about $440 right now...and you don't have to fight crowds to get it.
WinXP with 256MB of RAM?! THE HORROR!!!
Two Black Fridays ago I got my Mom and eMachines tower for $200 after $250 in rebates. I also got her a digital camera and printer for FREE after rebate. Last year my Dad got the same deal on an eMachines. :-)
You turkies. I have a 4 and a half year old mac laptop with a 500 MHz processor, 256 RAM, and a 10 GB HD. But you know what, this laptop that was the cheap model over four years ago can run the newest Apple OS, 10.4, full-version, just fine. And I can get this for a couple hundred bucks. If all you want is mp3/word processing, get one. Lightweight, good-looking, runs a full-power brand new OS, and cheaper than any of this other trash you could pick up.
And did I mention excellent battery life?
To #27 - You CAN NOT get a similar laptop from Dell for $440! The $499 Dell Special(which is no longer available)notebook has No Wireless, No DVD drive, and the processor will not perform as well as the Sempron. THe least expensive notebook currently available from Dell is $500 Inspiron 2200 and it STILL does not come with wireless standard.
BT
lol,, i just bought 2 pieces of crap (Compaq armada 110) for $10 a piece and windows 98 wouldnt install so i put Windows xp pro on one of em (with 56 mb ram!!!!) and it works surprisingly ok!!!! Im might upgrade the ram for about $40 so i can actually do something on them, lol.
To #13. I have had three $1500+ laptops sh*t the bed on me over the last 4 years. No matter how much or little you spend on these items, they will fail more easily than desktops due to their portable nature and general lack of heat ventilation.
I'd rather have a $400 laptop become unusable rather than an $1800 Thinkpad.
Just sayin...
#30, you couldn't pay me to take an Apple laptop. Apple has the worst user interface of any consumer operating system available today: it makes simple tasks difficult, and complex tasks impossible. Don't believe the propaganda: the user interfaces for Windows and Linux/KDE are both superior to that of the Mac.
I have had a sub $1000 Avertec Notebook for over 2 years. Use it regularly and have not had a single problem with it. Whoever bet $10 about sub $1000 notebooks, wheres my $10 LOL
I bought the $499 doorbuster Toshiba laptop from Best Buy last Black Friday, and it's still running fine. I spent another $80 on a 256MB DIMM and a wifi card, but still it was a great buy. This year, they have a $379 Toshiba, so I'll probably grab that for my daughter.
To #32:
You can infact get a similar laptop(hp ze2308wm) from Dell for about this price. the base model you can get it for $399. i saw it last week at one of my regular deal sites, stepbystepshopping.com, techbargain.com The only difference i see is that it doesn't have wireless connectivity. but that you can add it for another $40 may be?
I got the black friday sheet from Walmart the other day, it seems like this little sucker is gonna be sold for $378 instead of $398. How much can they possibly make off of this? Then the Hp Photosmart E317 5 mp Digi Cam is only $88 which is pretty cheap, although you can get a dorky batman digicam for $50. I'll stick with my nice Nikon, thank you.
Seems like Wallyworld is gonna do whatever it takes this year to get some mad cash. The Ultimate LightSaber kit is only $21 that day...so tempting. =]
I went to Walmarts site and viewed the preview ad for black Friday deals in Las Friday and the laptop was priced at $378. Yesterday I received the local ad in the mail and the laptop is listed at $488. I would have braved the crowd for $378 but at a $110 increase I doubt it. What is the deal?
I have a HP from Walmart a ze.... Damn I can't remember right now but... I can tell you that It is a 2.0 ghz with 256MB Ram and 40GB HD with the combo drive and my battery lasts about 2-3.5hrs. I love the thing.. I play DVD's with NO problem. My dad has been looking for a laptop so I told him about this one on black friday and he is going to go for it. He doesn't need the $1000 laptop to start with.
I have a HP from Walmart a ze.... Damn I can't remember right now but... I can tell you that It is a 2.0 ghz with 256MB Ram and 40GB HD with the combo drive and my battery lasts about 2-3.5hrs. I love the thing.. I play DVD's with NO problem. My dad has been looking for a laptop so I told him about this one on black friday and he is going to go for it. He doesn't need the $1000 laptop to start with.
hey mojo, your 399 Dell Laptop has a celeron vs an AMD semprom, and it has 14 in display vs 15in. and you have to wait for the mail-in rebate. so, swallow that, that hp laptop at walmart is a better deal.
Circuit City Toshiba with a Celeron M 370 processor, 60MB drive, and 512MB memory at $449 Friday after instant rebate.
vs.
WalMart HP with Sempron 2800+ processor, 40MB drive, and 256MB memory at $378.
Is the Toshiba the better value for $70 more?
I am thinking about possible getting this one -
I have a Dell C610 right now, 784 MB RAM, 1.0 GHz Intell PIII processor, 40 GB HD, 2 Batteries, CD RW/DVD drive, floppy drive, docking port, 1 USB 1.1 port :(, 2 PCMCIA slots :)
Would it be a good idea to get this one and bump some of the specs up with Memory from my Dell to get the a faster processor, USB 2.0, a new laptop and a nice screen ??
LOL. I really wanted a cheap laptop so that i would be able to take it with me to school or where ever. Nothing fancy, i have a decent desktop PC. Anyway. Went to walmart this morning...was a billion people there already at 4am. They had already brought the laptops out...all 20 of them lol. TWENTY...I know it is a super limited sale item. But for goodness sacks...20. Originally i went to get the one from circuit city that was $449 after instant rebates but there had been a line out there since before 3am and they had employees outside giving vouchers for items before anyone even went in the store...no voucher no sale item. Needless to say all 12 laptops they recieved were vouchered out to the first few people in line. Oh well...guess i am stuck in the computer chair a little bit longer. Black Friday...what a joke!!! :)
Joe
Woke up at 4 and drove to Wal-Mart to get in line with 200 or so people and all they had were 20 laptops. Needless to say I didn't get one. If you got one, what time did you line up? and how do you like it.
have a great holiday everyone...see I'm not bitter :-/
Yeah I waited on line for the circuit city one, but to no avail. People were there at midnight. You could have actually gotten the circuit city one for around $380. Your just had to sign up for AOL Broadband ($15 a month) instead of AOL Dialup. Circuit City definetly wasn't making money on the deal or if so it was very small. Let's be honest most people that use laptops just surf the net and use word. It was definetly the best laptop deal too bad I missed it.
my husband went to walmart for me this morning and got there at 3am. there were already 30 people in line. they gave out numbered tickets inside for the laptop and he was #22. he did in fact get one however, there were only a couple left after that. they must have only had 25 or so. it is a really small town walmart.....
haven't had a chance to check it out yet....
Wal-Mart is a load of crap, this sale was just a total gimmick to get people to be in their store, I arrived at my local store at 4:00am and was about 15th in line, waited for an hour only to find out they only had 12 laptops. Just wtf kind of crap is that, you would think they would 50 or 100 of these things on hand, basically at 5:01am they were already out of stock, cheap skates just wanting people to get in their store to buy other things, hell I immediatly walked out of there empty handed and pissed, no way am I gonna play that game and spend a dime in their store.