Toshiba L25-1193/1194 for Black Friday?

This is a great site. I'm glad I stumbled onto it. A good bit of info to decipher really quick. I'm in the IT business and have had several desktops, but have never had any contact with laptops/notebooks. Folks, I need help.

I'm looking for a under $1000 notebook for my Navy son. He's shipping out after the first of the year, and I want him to talk to his old Dad a lot more than he did the last time he deployed. I've been trying to find the right notebook and I've pretty much rested on Toshiba L25 and Dell(6000 - cheapo versions), but I just like the L25. Doesn't have to be special but my requirements are: 1.4ghz+, 512ram, cdrw/dvd,40gb+(5400), wifi, and of course all the other standard stuff I haven't mentioned..audio/video, etc.

Has there been any mention of Circuit City ads coming in yet. Been looking for the Toshiba L25-1193/1194 w/512ram. They have the 1194 at Best Buy for $800, but they should do better than that, I would think. Circuit City has the 1193 for considerably less..$550 I think. I was hoping to capitalize on black Friday. Are there major differences with these two notebooks? I know they're relatively new to the market, but thought you gurus might know something.

Sorry for the long post...but would appreciate anything you can do. Thanks guys, Jim.

 

Jim,

Compusa has a $150 rebate on the L25 right now so it's $649 after that. You could upgrade to 512 RAM for cheap by just buying another 256MB stick of RAM.

http://www.notebookreview.com/scripts/redirect.asp?country=us&merchantPricingID=3877510&merchantID=301158&productID=14436

Other than that I don't know of any circuitcity deals that'd be coming out.

 

Thanks for the reply, abaxter. I'll check Compusa out. However, if I were to upgrade ram, would that negate the warranty? And could I get Compusa to do it?

I guess the L25-s119 is close to the same as the L25-1193/1194...probably the first edition, or it could even be store number changing so you can't do any price comparison shopping. I heard these stores are sneaky at that. I haven't seen any reviews on these models. Is that because they're relatively new?

Thanks, Jim.

 

Wanted to update y'all on my purchase today. Thanks to you I got the Toshiba L25-s119 at Compusa for $650. It's a mail-in $150 rebate off $799, and hopefully they won't take 6 months with it.

I decided a day or so ago to try to work a deal with the L25 somewhere soon rather than wait for BF because I've been burned before waiting for the optimum time, then find they're all sold out. In this case at Compusa, they had 1 left...he said. I'm sure they will have some more by BF. At any rate, I doubt they would have been much lower than this anyway.

Hell, it still cost me $1000 total (after rebate) with a 512 upgrade to 768ram (they didn't have any 256, soooo) and a service package (my son will be far away so he'll have to take care of it).

Again, thanks for the help and let's hope this was an excellent buy.

Jim

 

hey Jim, that's great, I hope the L25 works out for you! You won't void any warranty by upgrading RAM, that's one of those things that manufacturers make upgradeable and unless you break the laptop by installing RAM wrong (i.e. yanking the door off or running a huge magnet over the open RAM area) then you're warranty is definitely still valid.

 

Best Buy has the 1192 on BF for $379

 

I hope you can still get an return/exchange or price match.

www.bfads.net has posted BestBuy Black Friday adscan for a couple days now and you could get L25-S1192 for $379 if you are the first few in line, meaning maybe you have to camp outside BestBuy. Still, it's instant rebate and almost $300 less than the $650 you get.

 

Does this model have a firewire connection?

 

Doesn't look like it has firewire.

 

That's a deal breaker for me then...if a laptop doesn't got firewire then it isn't current enough for me to buy. Any of the BF sub 500 laptops got a firewire connection?

 

There is always a PCMCIA firewire card as I don't think many if any of the BF laptop will come with firewire. Could be wrong.

 

Thanks for the input guys. I'm going back over there this AM and I'll ask about the price match, but my guess is if it's a BF sale...forget it, they won't touch it. It's worth a try, though.

 

The walmart has the option for it...you'd need to install it yourself but it has the option along with a card reader.

Circuit City also has the L25-1193 for $450....little more money but wouldn't need any upgrades(other than battery) right away.

 

Best Buy will have the L25 119? for $379 on BF

Intel Celeron 370 1.5GHz
256 MB DDR2 Memory (upgradeable to 1GB)
40 GB Hard Drive
DVD/CD-RW
ATI Radeon X200M
802.11 wireless

If I upgrade this to 1GB of DDR2 Ram, will it be good
enough for Word, Powerpoint and Websurfing?

 

It's fine for those purposes as it is. More RAM would help things go a bit more smoothly, though.

RAM is nice, but it isn't necessary. My friend's old Dell desktop has a PII, a 6GB HD, 196MB RAM, and runs Windows XP Home perfectly.

 

BB has the L25-S1192 for $379 (no rebates)
CC has the L25-S1193 for $450 ($199 if you sign-up for AOL for a year).

 

Yeah but the one at CC has an 60 GB harddrive and 512 memory whereas BB hasa 40 GB HD and 256 MB,
I was more comparing the CC purchase to the 579 gateway 360 notebook at BB, either with or without the AOL the CC is cheaper than that one and better becuase the graphics spec and processor are better, and the CC notebook comes with an all-in-one-printer, be-it maybe a crappy one no knowing what one it is.....not shooping for a notebook ina while i am hesitant of making that commitment, does anyone know if CC's return /exchange/repair procedures/tactics/policies are as good as i have heard BB's are?

 

The one from CC also has a bright-style screen....depending on your needs this could be bad but in most cases a plus.

 

Just remember that according to the Toshiba specs on their website that "dual channel support requires two memory modules of the same capacity and clockspeed".

That means you may actually decrease performance by adding a 256 stick to an existing 512 stick!