Walmart's $300 HP G60 laptop gets real, detailed
By Donald Melanson 
posted Nov 4th 2009 2:12PM
posted Nov 4th 2009 2:12PM
There wasn't exactly much secrecy left around this one after ads started popping up online, but Walmart's now set aside any doubt about its $300 HP G60-519WM laptop with a listing for it on its website, which also thankfully includes the complete specs for it. Apparently built exclusively for Walmart by HP, this particular model packs a 15.6-inch WXGA display, along with previously rumored specs including a 2.2GHz Celeron 900 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, a LightScribe DVD burner, and some basic Intel GMA 4500M integrated graphics -- not to mention Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit edition for an OS. Not exactly the worst deal for someone looking for bigger, more full-featured alternative to a netbook, to be sure, but we have a feeling this is just a taste of what's to come for bargain hunters on Black Friday.[Thanks, Luigi]
Sounds like something worth the price, and if I had the cash to blow I would likely pick one up.
You're forgetting the hidden costs of having to actually visit a Walmart.
between the unwashed redneck at Wal-mart vs. the unwashed hipster at the Apple store, I'd call it a push.
Where do you fit in Wes? Just a random personality-free nobody with no notable features?
@Wes: You made red (neck) mad. :)
Wonder if that celeron chip is soldered on? I'd pick this up if I knew I could swap it out for a real C2D proc myself, like I did with the bargain Gateway I picked up from Best Buy 3 years ago. Goddamn, has it been that long already?
Oh, and you people bitching about Walmart... really? Maybe it's different in Alaska, but minorities outnumber white people by a ratio of at least 4 to 1 here. Given that minorities make up a larger percentage of those living close to, at, or even below the poverty line, I find it hard to believe that rednecks are so abundant anywhere but in the southern states. It's cute though that you want to bitch about and look down on those who shop at Walmart out of financial necessity, but don't want to appear racist, so you go out of your way to single out the white folks. How evolved of you.
@Cash,
If Minorities outnumber white people 4 - 1, can you still call them minorities?
Minorities as a group may outnumber whites, but between the separate ethnic groups...
...whites rule?
The security guard that got trampled last year worked at the Walmart in Valley Stream - where I shop.
I wonder how many security guards will have to die for this?
Then again, the guards all have guns now :-(
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
Hey all out there. I'm looking into getting this HP g60-519 for my 12 year old daughter. I've read the posts below about the Celeron, but wanted to know if this would still be a wise purchase for me to make. My daughter would like to use a Wacom graphics tablet with a laptop, and surf the internet, lite word processing for homework and reports, nothing too intense like gaming. Does anyone think this laptop would fit the bill for this price? Thanks for any and all of your help. We were first just going to get her the graphics tablet and let her use it on our family PC, but if we can spend around $300 and get her a laptop, I'd sacrifice our "Mommy and Daddy" Christmas budget to make this happen for her, but don't want to blow it on a machine she won't get what she needs from it. Thanks again for any advice!
I'm in the market for a new laptop. But a Celeron? I'll pass and wait for a real laptop.
This isn't meant to be a power house labtop. Just something a little more powerful than a netbook for a netbook price.
"Just something a little more powerful than a netbook..."
This is quite a bit more powerful. I bet if you benchmarked it you'd see some major leaps over the Atom + 950 suckfest combo. Still, though, No C2D, no sale...
I've seen several people buy computers over the years with Celeron processors, and they've all been sorry in the end. The clock speeds belie the true crappiness of these processors.
What if you gently overclock the processor, within reason?
CtrlBurn:
The new Celeron CPUs are just cut down Core2 cores. They're really pretty quick, and sip power, and don't make much heat. Its gonna kick the crap out of an Atom, for sure.
It is a core 2 duo. The celeron 900 is a Penryn single core with only 1mb of cache. It is slightly less powerful than the regular Core 2 Duo but it obliterates the Atom and ULV C2S.
Well time out- lets decide what factors we are calling "Power" here. Comparing this with a HP 311 mini for kicks, as they both start @ the $300 mark.
The Celeron does indeed outperform which ever Atom your 311 comes with. Very true.
Then lets talk about graphics power. And this is where the whistle blows. Ion > GMA 4500M (and by > I mean rapes.)
RAM. Yea, 3 GB > 1 GB.
So the G60 wins the majority of performance specs. Processors are interchangeable, but no one buying this machine ever would anyway. Would be an excellent gift for semi-computer literate parents.
The computer I'm using now has a celeron 450 in it. It's fairly quick for doing basic office tasks.
my GF has the Compaq laptop they had on special last year for $300. It's basically the same thing, and I'm tellin you, it's good for anything as long as you're not a gamer. With Windows 7, it'll be even better for sure.
Yeah, I'm holding out for BF as well. Need a sub-$500 lappy for the home, but not getting a Celeron.
"2.2GHz Celeron 900 processor"
One word for that. Trash.
At $300?
Pretty awesome. Fade away.
Did you guys actually expect something better than a celeron for $300? I mean, you might find an AMD Sempron around that price, but seriously, until you get to $350, you get what you pay for (and for $300, you get a celeron)
I got a 64-bit Athlon laptop from BestBuy.com for $350, which isn't that much more than this.
$350 is almost 17% more than $300.
I've not heard anyone raving about any AMD mobile cpu, and you didn't mention any other specs.
Yea it's an Acer or Asus right Jake? That's the one I have my eye on. I was going to get this and a 360 over that one at Best Buy. But then I found out it was a Celeron. That Acer/Asus (not sure which one it was) is a much better deal. AND it has a webcam and mic.
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0320718
$299.99
Its got an Athlon TF-20, its not going to set the world on fire, but it has ATI Radeon 3200 integrated graphics. Seems $300 seems to be the sweet spot for dirt cheap laptops. Just as expensive as a netbook, but probably with more day to day usability then our Atom powered friends.
What I'm typing on right now is the HP G60-458DX. It is pretty much the exact same laptop as this one from the exterior, but mine has a Pentium Dual Core @ 2.0 Ghz, obviously much better than a celeron (netbook) processor, 4 gb RAM, webcam/mic, and HDMI output.
And I got the 458DX from Best Buy in late July for only $399.99, probably the best deal until Black Friday, if not better. The best part: I didn't have to get up and wait in line all of Thanksgiving Day and overnight and risk my life getting trampled (yes, it can happen), I just ordered mine online in the safety of my home and picked it up a few days later when I was in town.
But I can tell anybody who is interested in this that the one I have, which is pretty similar, is an awesome computer and I'm sure this one would be too, at a price point of only $300.
Really? How worse is it compared to any atom chip out there?
Its better than Atoms in every way except for power consumption and heat.
"Its better than Atoms in every way except for power consumption and heat. "
... you do realize that for a portable system power consumption and heat are two of the more important specs... right? With an Atom you may not have the speediest computer, but with a celeron you aren't either (in fact, you probably wouldn't notice much of a difference in normal use). The longer lasting battery life is pretty key... after that who wants their thighs on fire?
64-bit? Seriously?
Find me a non 64bit capable processor made in the last 2 years.
its the future, and is being adopted now.
To make this financially possible we have preloaded this laptop with even more crapware than ever.
Please note that we in the terms you agree with when you buy it you will give us full permission to gather "certain" data from your new laptop.
then you reformat it, reinstall windows from the disc/partition, and go on your merry way. unless the reinstall system is set up to put all of that crap back on there... but with the money you'd save, it might be worth an hour or two of uninstalling stuff from the programs control panel.
Yeah, to get the price that low I bet it has 250GB crapware preloaded. First thing to do would be to install a clean copy of Windows on it, or Ubuntu if you're cheap, and you are cheap because you're buying a celeron.
I'd guess a full day of PC Decrapifier + Revo Uninstalling?
You would install Windows back on it, because you already paid for the license.
HP laptops dont come with a windows disk, so Ubuntu is it.
Or you could build a Hackintosh. Yeah, I went there.
Celeron 900? All the shit performance of Atom with none of the battery life! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...
how can apple look at what they charge people for their 15 inch MBP and this product and live with themselves? is the MBP better? sure. FIVE, yes, FIVE TIMES?
no. with W7 or linux, that celeron should be fine, by the way.
Art, buy what you can afford.
If that's a 3rd rate Walmart laptop that HP but with some spare crap they had lying around, then fine. It's your choice.
Indeed, Win7 Ultimate runs great on my EEE 1005HA (and with only the 1GB of ram that came with it).
They build These Exclusive models so you cant get anyone to price match. I bet if you went over the HP line carefully you could find the matching model but it has a different model # so nobody will ever price match it.
Right, they're advertised as the G61 here.
Celeron 900 - single core, no enhanced speed step, 35W TDP
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=41498
If you want this for anything OTHER than a desktop that you occasionally lug and plug to another place, you're better off with a real laptop.
And $70 @ 1ku?? Seriously, Intel??
Would this laptop such a bad deal for someone who just wants to web browse, check email, do some basic work in open office, and listen to music?
That laptop is a GREAT deal for someone who is going to use it for what you listed.
can i have a compaq version for 249? :)
No, that'll bring you up to $400.
So now what will happen to the price of netbooks?
I was interested until I saw that nasty ugly disgusting word, Cele..., ugh.
its a $300 laptop! what did you expect, a C2D?
dude, it works just fine for people that use it for school and the web. My GF has one. It really is good enough. I even put Counter Strike Source on there for kicks, and if you kick everything down to low, it's playable. Obviously it's not a powerhouse for gaming or media editing, but it plays full screen HD just fine too. It's a real steal for $300, even more now than when she bought it, cause you'll get Windows 7 instead of Vista.
I didn't know laptops had "full sized" number pads built in.... with a fullsized keyboard to boot?
Seems unpossible.
The G60 doesn't have a full sized number pad. It's a squished one. We buy G60's for our outside salespeople at work. (Usually with a T6400 proc, not Celeron)
Over here in the UK, that would cost £181. The cheapeast laptops are around £250, which usually contain something around a 1.8GHz Celeron, 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 15.4" screen, and some awful make like E-Systems (Google it). This is an absolute bargain, it's a shame our UK version of Wal-Mart (Woolworths, went bust last Xmas) isn't still around, they would undoubtedly stock this laptop.
What I would like is just a notebook to kick around and use for my online tutoring job and some Hulu/Netflix viewing, but I really would like an HDMI-out so I can also use it to push those video streaming sites out to my tv. Do they make something like that? I don't need a powerhouse gaming laptop or anything, just like this, a netbook-ish thing with a larger screen and HDMI-out. I already have a notebook for general home use, but it would be nice to have one that's just mine, and not to be used by the wifey and kids. $300 or so would be pretty reasonable for this, I think...
Oh, and it has to be able to handle porn. Lots and lots of porn.
I hate to break it to all the celeron bashers that with a clean install of windows7 and the 3gb RAM the o/s is going to fly on this pc ... the cel 900 is a very capable CPU for the price.
I had a Dell with this same config except it had the old 3100 graphics and only 2gb RAM and i played WOW for hours at a time running on Vista Basic ...
Sounds like a great deal. What if you had to build your own with parts from NewEgg? $100 for the OEM Windows7 for builders, $50 for a 250GB HDD. $50 for memory. That leaves $100 for a laptop case, screen motherboard & processor, disk drive, keyboard. I don't think we can make it!
Hey all, would this laptop be any good for playing games on? Not any grafix intensive games, just some older ones, maybe a bit of mercs 2....basic stuff. I really want to know about the grafix card and how the processor holds up. Thanks!
What I'm most curious about is how this thing would handle Flash videos. Right now my mom is using my almost 6 year old Dell laptop to basically watch Hulu and play Flash games on Facebook, with some e-mail and web browsing thrown in. If it performs better than my old Pentium M 1.5 Ghz in those areas, I think I found her Christmas gift.
celeron? hahahahahahahahahaha. oh, you were trying to be serious. ahhaahahahahahaha. the only worse processor is the atom. but yeah, grandma will like this thing to try out that internet thing...
Hmm, and in last Sunday's newspaper one of the brick and mortar stores had an HP laptop for $349. What so special about saving $50 on Black Friday? I am sure the time spent standing in line could be better served making $50 elsewhere.
I think it kind of curious that everyone talks about this in comparison to netbooks as being better as if it is the same thing with a smaller or larger motor.
It, generally speaking, is not.
The netbook category is one of mobility - small size and light weight.
The kind of thing business notebooks have been charging a hefty tariff for, for years now.
True - if you want it to sit on a desk and only occasionally lug then this is a better idea than a netbook.
But that was always the case...
If you've got to carry it every day then this larger size and weight can wear you down.
They are not apples and apples.
They are oranges and clementines.
And for everyone whining that a dual core is needed or a celeron is necessarily trash, then congratulations and don't forget to check the box which says you are susceptible to marketing if it comes up on a questionaire.
What big "dual-core" apps are you running that you need that?
And how do they work exaclty to mitigate the single line memory access which is the bottleneck anyway?
What are you looking to buy... a luggable, ultra cheap laptop gaming rig ????????
No such beast exists.
Hey Cash:
I don't know where you live, but in the USA whites outnumber everyone else by at least 3 to 1. According to the 2000 US Census, the US population is somewhere between 69.1% and 79.1% white, depending on how you look at it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States_Census
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/briefs/phc-t1/tables/tab03.pdf
What part of Europe do you live in?
Does anyone know if this celeron 900 can be changed out? Or will I need to install a different MB? Thanks
I was thinking about buying this for my parents. They use the computer to surf the web and they do use itunes, but no games or anything like that. I know its a celeron processor, but considering what they would use it for is it a good buy? Thanks.
will this hp laptop run new Corel Draw? What about video clips at 720 and uploading to You Tube, then over to Yahoo Site Solutions small business web site?