Do you think specials will be better in August?

Stupid question, but I need a laptop for myself and for assisting with a business. HP has some great pricing now, but I am worried that next month they will have better stuff for back to school. For the folks here that follow this stuff do the sales get better or worse next month?

 

According to HP pricing history, it won't be much difference for "better deal". Rightnow they already run $150 off + HD upgrade + 1GB Memory, next step would be expected free DVDRW upgrade. I don't think GPU upgrade will be free untill a new Intel GPU release. So it is matter of $50 difference.

 

If you can wait, usually it's better to do so, if only just to see what comes along. If you need it sooner rather than later, it isn't likely that you'll find yourself being burned come August.

 

It looks like I will be buying sooner than later. If anyone has any other opinions please let me know. Going to look at the Dell Specials after the Days of Crappy Deals are over and then I will decide.

 

The only reason you would consider delaying your purchase till next month is the arrival of Core 2 Duo not back-to-school special.
In my opinion, buying a computer now while you can wait until next month is not a good idea.
When C2D comes out, you definitely will see considerably lower prices on the current models (both Intel and AMD).

1. New models come = lower prices on low models
2. Intel needs to fight back = new models are priced very competitively = old models are even cheaper

 

Do you think we will see these price drops on HP's business notebook models?

 

I imagine you'll see a drop in any Pentium-M systems as they try to clear any stock out of that platform, but little to no drop for Core based systems unless AMD tries to starts a pricewar.

If Merom is as good as Conroe, then I susepct there just won't be a lot of reason for Intel to cut prices much.

However all I can promise is that whatever happens, whenever you buy, whatever you buy, you will be shocked at the how much the price depreciates 6 months later.

 

There definitely will be price drop for the current Core based systems (how could there be no price drop when something new comes up?) and all AMD systems.

Look at the current official Intel price list here:

http://www.intel.com/intel/finance/pricelist/June_4_06_1ku_Price_web.pdf

The Jun 06 prices for the current Core Duo:

T2600 (2.16GHz, 2MB)
$423
T2500 (2GHz, 2MB)
$294
T2400 (1.83GHz, 2MB)
$241

Then, look at the price list for the upcoming Core 2 Duo:

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/5948/

T7600 (2.33GHz, 4MB)
$637
T7500 (2.16GHz, 4MB)
$423
T7200 (2GHz, 4MB)
$294

As you can see, the new Core 2 Duo are priced the same as the old Core Duo when compared with the clock frequency.
For $294 today, you get a T2500 (2GHz).
In about a month, you get a T7200 (2GHz) for the exactly same price!
Who would buy an old T2500 if Intel doesn't low the price?
Don't forget that the T7200 is from a new architecture and has 4MB L2 instead of 2MB in the old T2500.

Now, look at what AMD pricing look like right now.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_609,00.html

Turion 64 X2 TL-60 (2GHz, 1MB)
$354
Turion 64 X2 TL-56 (1.8GHz, 1MB)
$263
Turion 64 X2 TL-52 (1.6GHz, 1MB)
$220
Turion 64 X2 TL-50 (1.6GHz, 512KB)
$184

The pricing is not attractive at all even compared to the current Core Duo parts.
And then with all the good reviews for Core 2 Duo now showing all over the web and Intel's competitive pricing, what could AMD do with their TX2? The answer is obvious: lower their prices unless they can come up with something great or even better immediately.

In other words, if you are going for Intel, for the same price you can get something that has at least 1.2X performance improvement and 64-bit support when you buy it later in August.
No matter if you are going for Intel or AMD, my guess is you could at least see the price for the same configuration fall at least 20%.
So my advice is don't buy any computers after Intel physically release Core 2 Duo.
Also, don't forget to compare the prices for Intel and AMD system. AMD doesn't mean great price anymore.
For example, I just configured both a dv2000t and dv2000z.

Code:

dv2000t:                            dv2000z
Core Duo 2250 1.73GHz 2MB           Turion X2 TL-52 1.6GHz 512KB
GeForce Go 7200                     GeForce 6150
512MB                               512MB
Intel ABG wirless                   b/g wireless
$1044.99                            $1054.99

The AMD one is actually more expensive.
I don't know how Core Duo compared to TX2, but I believe these two systems are more or less the same in performance.
Note: the Intel one has a 802.11a wireless (although almost useless to most people), a better GPU, and also has free upgrade to 1GB RAM.

 

But the 2250 can only run 533Mhz RAM while the X2 can use 667Mhz RAM.

If you go right now and purchase a notebook or if you can wait,there will always be some deal that allows you to get the right notebook for the money.
(actually right now a large number of office stores and electronic dealers are in the Back to School sales right now)

 

Guys, remember that the price of the CPU is not the only factor that dictates the final price of a notebook. In a month or two there might be a drop on the price of the Core Duo due to the release of the new Core 2 Duo, but you might not find the free upgrades for the RAM memory and the Hard Drive, or the $150 rebate. So at the end you might end up paying the same that you would pay right now.

 

I agree with mralex on AMD price. It really doesn't make sense for AMD holding this high price and not really have great performance compare with Intel. Only 64bit support is not attractive enough to win the share back. Upto now, I think X2 is not so success if you consider the factor of speed performance and battery life.

Computing Speed: Intel wins AMD a little bit
3D Graphic: Intel+7200 wins AMD+6150
Battery Life: Intel wins AMD
Price: Intel wins AMD even equip higher GPU(7200)

Consumer doesn't even need to consider the newer Core 2 Duo. AMD is pushing them to Intel now. Unless, Intel Core 2 Duo perform really bad which happened when P-4 replaced P-III. Could this really happen? I very much doubt.

It is all because Intel start price war already, but AMD hasn't response yet. Will AMD answer this? or NOT?

 

Well, I guess this should answer that question...
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3362
Expected Turion X2 prices as of Oct 23, 2006...
Turion X2 TL 64 - $337
Turion X2 TL 60 - $250
Turion X2 TL 56 - $209
Turion X2 TL 52 - $175
Turion X2 TL 50 - $146

As for as performance responses to Merom..well it wont happen in 2006, most likely in 2007 or further whenever they are ready with the K8L.

 

Hey, this table is really exciting. I especially like the newer Sempron 3600+/3500+ S1. The 3500+ is 1.8G 512K/64bit, and is so cheap only consume 25W. If AMD TL-xx not boost significant performance in fare reviews, then new Sempron might be a good alternative for AMD fans who are expecting 65nm X2 next year. I don't think TL are worth to try unless I was proved being wrong.

Even Sempron 3400+ system is worth to try. Think about this, you only spend $130+ to replace a more powerful Sempron and waiting for newer X2 till next year. Or you can just leave it to next year. 25W TPD is more worthy than 31W things.

 

The prices look OK but Oct 23?
I bet these prices will be effective as soon as merom is out.

Also, K8L vs merom?
It would be K8L vs Santa Rosa then.

 

I have a similar question. I'd been waiting to buy a computer at least until the dv2000t was available with the semi-discrete graphics card. But now that we're 2/3 through July, and Merom comes out in August sometime, it almost seems dumb to buy now if I could wait just a few more weeks and get 64 bit and a slightly faster processor.

My question is -- is Merom worth waiting another few weeks for?

When do we think it will be available for delivery in systems?

Thanks.

 

For everybody who keep asking if they should wait for the Merom, you have to ask yourself, is it worth to wait? new technology is release constantly and if you decide to wait you might keep waiting forever. Also, is is worth the extra money you will spend for the Merom? Will it be that much better than the Core Duo performance-wise? Will you really put all that new technology to use? 32 bit? 64 bit? 260 bit? 2346 bit? How much faster is that? 1 second, 2 seconds? .... Right now you can get a great deal for an excellent system.
Anyways, just an opinion.

 

it's true that new technology is always coming, but you don't usually have a year where 3 major releases occur in the span of 8 months (Core Duo in Jan, followed by Turion X2 and Merom). this may be the one time where waiting has made sense because we're not just talking about the usual lower prices/more ghz paradigm. i *almost* bought a Core Duo in May, then figured waiting another 4 months to see X2 & Merom benchmarks would be worth it. judging from the first Core Duo 2 desktop benchmarks in Anandtech last week, the wait seems to have been worth it. when i buy in Sep/Oct, i'm either going to get a great deal on a Core Duo or spend the extra $ for extra horsepower with Merom.

 

Hey puthupa, would you mind me asking what kind of applications will you be running with your laptop? If you need all that horsepower I'm assuming we are not talking about regular email, word documents, spreedsheets, photoshops and games, right? Just curious.

 

Let me rephrase my question....

I understand the whole argument that one could end up waiting indefinitely if he kept waiting for the next great thing in computers. I've basically made the decision to wait for Merom, but not beyond then. I'm most interested in futureproofing. I realize that's impossible, but I've been running my present computer for ... longer than I'm going to admit here. Part of the reason I've been able to do that is that I bought the best thing available at the time.

With Vista coming out sometime in the next year or so, and what will probably be a broader move to 64-bit computing over the next few years, I suspect that waiting for Merom could extend my new computer's useful life a bit farther than the presently available Core Duo. And since Merom's release is only about a month out, I'm content to wait.

Dual core, 64 bit, and the new Core architecture seem to be the largest changes to computing in at least a couple of years. For me, it makes sense to wait until all three of them are released before I commit to a new computer.

Ok, so I didn't really have a question.

 

Exactly!
Waiting or not depends on two things:

1. How close is the release of the new technology?
2. How major is the release?

At this point waiting makes a lot of sense because

1. Merom is around the corner (next month). We are not talking about Santa Rosa, which is coming early next year (not too far away actually; Intel is really aggressive now)
2. Core 2 Duo is the new architecture that Intel is betting on to fight back. Look at all those reviews (of the desktop parts). The performance increase and the number of useful new features are significant.
3. Plus, Intel needs to fight back, so price is going to be great!

When was the last time you saw all these situations at the same time?
This is one special golden moment for us buyers.


DV2000t, I am 99% sure that in a month an old Core Duo system would be cheaper than what it is right now even without the current $100 coupon.

dv2000t is a brand new model, and the reason why they are offering coupons on new models is because everybody knows it is going to be cheaper just a month later and everybody is all holding on their purchases (a few of my friends and myself). I guess this also contribute to the declined laptops shipment in the 1st half of 2006.

So again, if you can live without a laptop until end of August, wait!

 

Reading some reviews of Vista, it is really a scary memory eater. I expect 2GB to run it normally. It is not about 64 bit support or not, it is about memory size. Surely 64 bit might get some advantage of new Vista-64, but the application may grow kinda slow. We will not get fully compitition result until all typical applications are 64-bit available.

20% of my tasks are video encoding, very little gamming stuff. I would not bother to play game while my encoding stuff is running.

And for Merom, 4MB cache may improve 10% over 2MB according to some reviews. Battery life is more valuable to me if we talk about same horsepower.

To me, I would probably wait till 65nm Turion X2 and see if it is much power saving than it before. Merom and Core Duo makes no difference to me. Surely the horsepower will increase, but can it increase over 30% with same price? I very much doubt it. If Merom extend battery a lot, then that would be different story. But will it? On the other side, new Turion X2 will be much interesting, it goes from 90nm to 65nm.

 

AMD's 65nm won't be out until at least end of this year and volume production next year. By that time Santa Rosa will be out, and in the same year, Intel will have 45nm.

In my opinion, the good time AMD has been and is still enjoying is numbered (measured in days now).
From what we can see in the forseeable future, the road ahead for AMD is really tough (their stock price has already been reflecting this; I guess the wall street does have analysts that have technical knowledge).

In recent years, they did really good designwise and beaten their heavily armed rival.
But now Intel catches up in skills but AMD is still with the old weapons.

Last time AMD has a 8-month gap with Intel when rolling out 90nm.
The situation hasn't improved for 65nm.
Intel has been using 65nm since last Nov and now 8 months has passed and we still don't see the light for 65nm from AMD.
You can see how bad the situation is from the fact that AMD needs to start seeking partnership for this.
The gap is going to expand to multiple years, and this is very very bad for AMD.

 

Now the question shifts to if venders will keep the Laptop price around $1000. It is because the pricewar between AMD and Intel that we can enjoy $1000 laptop with latest(almost) CPU. Will this last for a long time? If AMD finally fade out of mobile market, Intel will go back to their high price like the golden age of centrino(high profit). That is really bad to consumers.

You are right, unless AMD roll out significant improve in their newer X2 design, things will just get worse. Question is how much power will it save from 65nm to 45nm? and how much cache will be added by Intel? Intel has the advance to get larger cache. Is there a limit?

Off topic anyway.

 

even though its off topic all very interesting. i think i am going to wait until the 1st or 2nd week of august to buy. just to be on the safe side.

 

Oh man. Don't tell me I'll have to return my latop again.

 

DV2000T, you will not. I think it at least worthy for two years. Two years may not even enough for finishing all 64-bit app migration. Even Merom will have high price at 4M cache version. 2M version will not give you much boost(If I am really wrong, just return it again ).

 

They don't have to port all apps to 64-bit, just the one app you want to run that benefits from the architectural improvements provided by x86-64 (doubling of general registers, etc).

There have been some mentions that Intel's implementation of the AMD64 instruction set isn't as good as the original but hard numbers are difficult to come by. 64-bit Vista could be a big help to AMD if Microsoft ever gets it done.

Remember that AMD doesn't transition to a new process until they've figured out how to get mature yields. Intel has so many fabs that they can start their transition earlier and accept mediocre yields at first. I think it takes 2 months after a wafer start for finished chips to hit the market. There should be lots of AMD 65nm chips for sale around the end of this year. Ironically, Intel flooding the market with their obsolete Netburst cores may have allowed AMD to take down production lines for 65nm transition earlier than planned.

 

audio production - my software synths & effects suck up cpu bandwidth like crazy. i can max out my Pentium 760 pretty easily, partially due to my preferred apps less-than-stellar efficiency with external plugins. my app for production is Ableton Live, and in spite of the inefficiency it is super easy to work with, allowing me to get ideas down quickly. they are releasing a new version in fall that will support dual cpus, so the inefficiency won't be as much of an issue. i'm not very concerned about 64bits, but if Merom can offer a real increase over Core Duos (as the anandtech report suggests), it will be well worth it for me.

one of the reasons i've been intrigued with HP was due to the dual hard drives, as i would also gain if my Photoshop scratch disk had a separate drive (i have an external hd, but i don't always use it). otherwise, i need more ram as well since 1gb is not cutting it for design work. oh - and the new styling on the 2000/6000/9000 is way sexy. i just hope i don't get the malfunctioning keyboard.

 

Wow, the war has finally started!
I hope the laptop parts will get comparable reduction.
Thanks AMD for their hard work in the recent years in putting Intel into this situation and thus making this price war possible but right now I would also like to see AMD being punished (by Intel re-gaining some of its market share).
Holding onto the high prices immediately after winning a little bit market share just doesn't make me, a royal customer, happy.

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/07/20/amd_dual-core_drop_must_approach_51_percent/

 

Okay back to the question? I am ready to buy very soon. I really don't care about memron or pemron. The pricing alone will take it out of my range. I am just looking for opinions on how HP runs it's specials. I am looking at Dell's Specials now and everyday they are raising and lowering prices on different items. Without those coupons you are in trouble.

 

Different from Dell, HP saving is pretty much stable. Sometimes it loose $50 saving, will come back but after a few week. There is no day trading in HP.

 

If I'm not mistaken, today I saw on the HP website a free upgrade from the DVD RW combo to the Dual Layer. I saw it under the "special offers section" on the screen where you customize the laptop. However, it still wasn't reflected in the price. Same thing happened before the free memory and hard drive upgrade became available a few days ago, so I wouldn't be surprise if the DVD dual layer free upgrade starts within the next few days.

 

that is the toughest thing. You buy something and the next day it's cheaper. It's bound to happen since it's before the holidays but I don't want it to happen the next day. That's why I am trying to wait until The first week of August

 

For my past experience of V2000z, it is actually the oppsit. 2 weeks after I bought it, the price was bounce back $100.

Generally, buying a computer is like buy a car. It depricates very fast. After 2~3 years, it worth only $50 less.

Right now, nothing force me to make any decision. I will just sit back and wait.

Intel just want to make this price war harder and harder.

 

Hmmmmah, the problem is the last time they had the free updgrade on the cd/dvd component, the memory and hard drive deal disappeared a day later.

 

Special offers and deals

» Free shipping!
a $49 value!
$100 instant savings
» $50 mail-in rebate
Free upgrade to 80GB hard drive
from 60GB
Free upgrade to 1GB memory
from 512MB
Free upgrade to DVD± R/RW with double layer
from combo drive
» Free video download service from Vongo
(30-day trial)



This is what the site shows when signing with the APP password. Notice the free upgrade of the DVD.
Don't forget that you still have 30 days after your laptop was delivered to ask for a refund in the case the price of the laptop drops. Just a reminder.

 

Interesting. I see they mention the DVD upgrade, but it is not reflected when I check the DVD option; it still adds $50 to the total.
Yes, I signed in to the APP site.

BTW, about a year or so ago HP changed the return policy to 21 days (not 30 days anymore). Check your delivery date and don't screw up.

If anyone buys it today, with the usual 10-day lead, the last day to return is about 8/21, which I think will be still a bit too early to see general availability and pricing of Core 2 Duo.

 

Yes, the return policy is 21 days. But I was refering to asking for a refund (of the difference in price) in case the price of the laptop drops after your purchase. You have 30 days to do that. Right after I bought my latop the prices changed (cheaper) so I called HP and they refunded me the difference between what I paid and what the new price was.

 

Is their price adjustment an official policy?
I thought price adjustment was just a side effect of return policy.
Usually they don't mention it explicitly, but if you call within the return policy period, they will just refund the difference to you because you have the right to return the computer anyway, and they don't want you to do that.
So, I don't see the reason why they will adjust your price if you are out of the 21-day return policy.

 

Hey mralex, this is what their policy states:

"The HP Home & Home Office Store reserves the right to change prices at any time. Should we lower the price of the product you purchased, you may call 1-866-433-2018 within 30 days of receiving your order to request a credit for the difference between the price you paid and the current the HP Home & Home Office Store selling price. This excludes mail-in rebates, which are not part of this price protection."

You can find that under the "Terms and Conditions" section on their website. Here is a link to it:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/terms.do?leftNavIndicator=terms

 

Have you heard the news AMD will be have a price cut on Jul 24 and Oct 23? http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20060720PR212.html

Now there's a great possibility that HP will lower their prices by August! Yes!

 

Thanks for the info.
It is very nice of HP.