Office Depot sold $100 HP PC over Labor Day

So while Nicholas Negroponte was noodling around with his pet project -- the computer formerly known as the $100 Laptop, and now called the 2B1 -- spending precious hours changing every aspect of it from the name to whether or not it had a hand crank, Office Depot went and beat him to the punch, sorta. Ok, sure, the initial outlay was more than a hundred bucks, but after $330 in mail-in rebates, this past Labor Day weekend Office Depot sold an HP minitower with a Celeron D 352 (3.2GHz), 256MB of RAM, 80GB hard drive, CD burner, a 16-inch CRT and an F380 printer for the low low price of a century bill. Although it may not come it bright colors, assuming you do get your rebates you'll be spending far less than the $130-$140 that NickNeg's cute creation will cost you. Oh yeah, and there isn't a minimum order of one million, either.

[pbase @ Sep 6th 2006 1:54AM]

Come on, Circuit City! FIre back with the $49 PC package!

[JehovaHimself @ Sep 6th 2006 1:57AM]

Yes, it's called a "lost leader" in the world of retail. Best Buy does it all the time (anyone remember last Spring the 512MB memory which sold for $35 minus the $35 instant savings if installed by Best Buy? They were hoping you'd get more PC parts installed or upgrade to more expensive memory. Many people exploited this and got free Kingston memory -- myself included.)

Anyway, I'm surprised the WindowsXP license alone is less than $100.

[Craig @ Sep 6th 2006 1:58AM]

it's loss leader

[Reg @ Sep 6th 2006 2:03AM]

They were probably hoping you'd not submit the rebates. Some rebate processing companies sometimes even "lose" rebate submissions and since they can take up to 2 months, most people forget about them. Logitech is notorious for doing this.

Rebates are always risky for the consumer so unless it's instant then I wouldn't count on it.

[Dr Abdullah @ Sep 6th 2006 2:12AM]

You should mention the news as or even before it happen so it will be useful to us.
even if it is sold for a one dollar what we gonna do now...useless information.
i am sorry i am negative...
i am from Libya but lives in California!

[Ferny @ Sep 6th 2006 2:17AM]

you should also mention that they have a shipping fee of $100. I heard about this in Beta News

[Shredsled87 @ Sep 6th 2006 2:22AM]

16" CRT?

[Miguel Menchu @ Sep 6th 2006 2:27AM]

I don't know why you are comparing the One laptop per child project to this. It's a different market and most importantly, it's a different product. Unless, of course, everything that has a hard drive,a bios chip and a monitor is pretty much the same to you. Why are you comparing this Desktop to Negroponte's machine when his vision is a lot closer to a laptop than a desktop???

[PPC @ Sep 6th 2006 2:47AM]

Come on Staples beat this with a $25 pc package, take that pbase!

[PPC @ Sep 6th 2006 2:50AM]

I hate mail-in rebates!

[Killian @ Sep 6th 2006 3:18AM]

I got one for free last year from Office Depot on Black Friday

[Rai @ Sep 6th 2006 3:37AM]

and there is a limit on the amount of rebates, most often it's 1 rebate per household and limited to the use of the billing address as well... so no your uncles and aunties can't redeem rebates for you...

[HL @ Sep 6th 2006 3:42AM]

$100 + tax on $330 is pretty close to $130 =P

[Hitesh Sawlani @ Sep 6th 2006 7:29AM]

To the one saying that this aint the same as the laptop per child thing...

The objective is the same, the laptop per child is to educate the newer generations on technology from an earlier age, so instead of being just call centre people they can also be the developers, designers etc...

To do so at a low cost, hence the stripping away of all the overheads... but this PC has gone to show, a regular fully fledged PC CAN be relatively close in price whilst not compromising.

[dave @ Sep 6th 2006 8:19AM]

You have to pay a $99.99 delivery fee and wait 30 days for your computer to come like the person said above.

[andy @ Sep 6th 2006 9:42AM]

well taxes in mn would add $30, they charge $120 for shipping (it's a "built to order" pc and they dont have them in the stores...bs), so total outlay would be $250. i opted for a compaq amd athlon 3500+ with 512 and 200 gig, 17" lcd (rather than the 16" boat anchor- seriously crts are just a liability these days- if you give me one i have to pay to recycle it!), and printer for $399. a little more money, but actually a decent computer....

too good to be true? yup

[Pal @ Sep 6th 2006 9:51AM]

Shedsled87: '16" CRT?'

17" CRT, 16" viewable. Read carefully.

[Johnny @ Sep 6th 2006 10:50AM]

I work at an Office Depot and we did this around this time last year, so its no big surprise it happened again the other day.

We didn't sell to many the other day either common people it was $100, sort of.

[MB @ Sep 6th 2006 12:43PM]

It has already been noted, but it still needs to be addressed. There is a $100 SHIPPING charge. I unfortunately work there and I'm a little irked that they can even get away with this, but they have. It's very deceiving in my opinion.

[CptMystic @ Sep 6th 2006 2:17PM]

I don't see anything about it coming with any OS, so add in the cost of Windows XP (or Linux, if you prefer). Fry's Electronics has a similar deal without rebates for $199 all the time.

I agree with the "rebates are a ripoff" crowd - I *never* consider the "rebated" price as the actual price unless it's an instant rebate. This has pretty much kept me from shopping at a lot of these "discount" places, because their discount is bullcookies.

Someone mentioned two months for rebate turnaround - I've had them take more than a year. If I were king, rebates would be illegal.

There's definitely a difference between this and Negroponte's idea, at the very least in that it's not portable. You *know* the premium you generally have to pay for that portability...it's measured in hundreds of dollars.

[Perrey Z. @ Sep 7th 2006 9:45AM]

If it involves Mail-In Rebates then is not worth it. 99.9% of the time rebates are not honored even when the consumers follow the rules. Once you cut the UPC bar code from the box and send it, you're screwed. And i don't thing such a tiny thing requires a $99.99 Delivery fee.

[Doug @ Sep 3rd 2008 2:46PM]

Not that I'm a fan of the OLPC but WTF does this have to do with a small, cheap, low power, ruggedized laptop? I'd like to see this HP model pass the same 4 foot drop test the OLPC does. Doesn't quite fit in the backpack either and if you want to human power the thing, get a dozen of your friends and some good bicycle tied generators cause this isn't quite a power sipper the OLPC XO is. Not by any stretch of the imagination.