Best Buy has $350 Compaq Notebook this week - decent specs

Best Buy has a Compaq Notebook on sale this week for $350. Decent specs for a general purpose notebook:

Best Buy Info
Compaq Site Info

Intel T3400 Dual Core Pentium 2.16GHz
Windows Vista Home Basic
2GB DDR2 667MHz / expandable to 4GB (nice)
15.6" 1366x768 (16:9 )
160 GB HDD 5400 RPM
Intel GMA 4500M up to 797MB RAM
DVD+-RW 8x
6-cell battery
And your usual stuff: 802.11b/g, 10/100 LAN, phone modem (wow), 3 USB, headphone/mic, VGA out.

Not a bad price for what you get IMHO. The only thing I don't like is the 16:9 display. Couldn't they at least make it 1280x800? And no ExpressCard slot. I'd prefer they ditch the modem and go with another USB or eSATA port myself. But for $350 what can you expect? Cheaper than most netbooks with more power, although it weighs 6.5 lbs but is less than 2" thick.

 

I shall move this into the deals section!

 

That's a fantastic deal, considering you can't even get a netbook for that price, this is a far more useful type of laptop. The build quality may not be that awesome, but for $350 if if falls apart after a couple of years I wouldn't be too sad.

 

Make it $375.00 due to the $24.99 shipping price. No pick up in store available.

 

Typo in the first post. The resolution is 1 366x768.

EDIT: Well how about that - there's a typo on BestBuy's spec page too. (The overview says 1366, while the spec page says 1266. The former is no doubt the correct one.)

 

Yes, but it is available in store if you go TO the store, if it is in stock. They just won't let you buy it online, only mail order.

I might just have to pick one up. For $350 it's a good disposable laptop that if my kids beat it up or my wife drops it (she's the most accident prone person I know ) it's not a huge loss. We have to keep our PC's in our basement because otherwise our oldest toddler will be sure to destroy it.

 

Incredible deal. The laptop looks nice too.

 

Stupid customer reviews. One guy says "it should be faster" and another "cheaply built". What do they want for $350? Either way I'd do a fresh Vista install anyhow, I'm sure there's a bunch of unneeded crap on there.

I think I will try to go to Best Buy today and see if they have any, and will buy one. Save me $25 in shipping. In either case you have to pay sales tax Unless you're lucky enough to live somewhere that doesn't charge sales tax!

There is also a $399 version with 3GB RAM and 250GB HDD if you want a little more RAM/Storage!

 

this is a great deal!

 

Stopped by Best Buy today and bought one, must have still had a hundred or more in stock, but there were four people waiting with me for them to pull them down from the overhead racks. Will report back with a brief review. However, will most likely nuke it and start with a fresh Vista install. Have to download drivers first though. May pick up a 1GB stick from newegg.com for $10. That should help performance in general especially with Vista.

 

Nice deal! Looking forward to your *brief* review!


Cin

 

This is a great deal! Anyone who gets this, please post how you like it!

 

this is the type of deal you usually see on black friday. pretty impressive price. this would be a good deal for someone who has not taken the laptop plunge yet.

 

Ok finally had a chance to break open the box. Here's my initial impressions, sorry, but only had about 30 minutes with it. Will do a more detailed write up later, hopefully in the next day so if anyone is interested in this deal, they can make their decision.

The packaging was actually quite robust, better than the Gateway P-7811FX I have, which cost over three times as much. Very little came packaged with it as expected, just the power supply, battery, and a wipe cloth apparently to keep fingerprints off the ultra shiny top surface and screen. I don't understand the reason for the shiny lid, since it is typically much cheaper to have a matte grained plastic surface than the shiny one, but oh well.

One item to note is that it appears either the plastic protector over the lid or the plastic wrap is not static proof. In the process of removing the notebook, and removing the protective film, I shocked the machine (and me). So far no ill effects, but that is just a bad product decision.

There are no CD's or DVD's at all. You have to make your own backup CD's (I think, haven't tried it yet). It has a recovery partition to restore your PC back to factory default. Hopefully there's an option to do a typical Vista install instead of adding all the Compaq crap. But either way I'll have to borrow a Vista CD and install fresh later on.



The build quality is much better than I expected. It feels rigid, not much twist to it, but it's also feels quite heavy. It's overall dimensions are near that of my well equipped P-7811FX. The Compaq is nearly as wide but not quite as deep, and definitely as thick. See in this photo here. It's the one in the lower right, amongst all my other notebooks (from top left down: Eee 900, Eee 1000h, Asus N10J, Dell Vostro 1500, Gateway P-7811FX, Compaq):



I decided to just install the battery and boot up and run on battery to see where the battery was charged and if I could actually get into the OS without a problem. No problem. It booted fairly quickly, and the intial Compaq setup was less than five minutes. I was in Vista in less than ten. At that point, battery indicated at 48%.

First thing I noticed is the screen brightness isn't all that great, and it's got a glossy screen, so outdoor use might be an issue. Will have to test that tomorrow.

The keyboard feels average. It is a little springy with the keys having a moderate travel, but nothing to complain about. I type very fast and am picky about keyboards, so this one should suffice your average Joe PC user. However, as you can see in this image, the arrow keys are in a funky configuration. They are tiny and smooshed under the lower right shift key. Of moderate concern, but nothing drastic.

Photo of keyboard:


And that's about it for the moment. I decided to shut down and charge it up, and shut myself down for the evening. Get a little shuteye before my two youngin's wake me up at 5 or 5:30am.

Hopefully tomorrow: 3DMark05, 3DMark06, Crapware overview, Installed drivers, Web browsing, and overall responsiveness.

 

Had a few minutes to run some benchmarks:

3DMark05: 1077 / 6466 CPU

3DMark06 @ 1024x768 (fits on screen): 768 / SM2 = 227 / SM3 = 310 / CPU = 1717

3DMark06 @ 1280x1024 (default): 684 / SM2 = 203 / SM3 = 273 / CPU = 1700

PCMark05: 4120

 

just got one a few days ago, wednesday to be exact. they had 2 left at the nearest best buy. Right now I'm on the verge of converting it to XP. But it might be less complicated to just reformat with a fresh vista install.

 

is this deal still on?

 

Probably not.

 

I actually turned this into my Windows 7 beta PC. Figure it would be a good test, and if it failed, oh well. Will mainly use it for web browsing, basic office apps (saved to home server).

 

I actually like the tiny little arrow keys, since the shift keys get more use than the arrow keys (and thus deserve to be full sized).

 

Nice, may pick one up

 

Sorry guys, sale is over this week. Ended last Saturday 2/3/09

 

not a bad deal

 

sounded like a sweet deal.