Circuit City's $99 laptop war

Circuit City is celebrating the holiday season with price wars.

The retail chain will try to best Wal-Mart and Staples with a Compaq notebook for $299 after rebates, or $99 with rebates and a 12-month subscription to Vonage, according to Black Friday 2006. The bargain-hunting site posts scans of Sunday advertising inserts before they're delivered with newspapers.

(Credit: Black Friday)

Wal-Mart and Staples have come out with $398 and $399 Compaq laptops. The Circuit City notebook is similar, though it comes with a Celeron processor from Intel rather than a chip from Advanced Micro Devices. It also contains a drive that burns both DVDs and CDs, not just CDs like the Wal-Mart laptop. (Wal-Mart's site is no longer advertising the cheap Compaq laptop, so it may already be sold out.)

All three come with 512MB of memory, a 15.4-inch screen and a 60GB hard drive. Circuit City currently sells the Compaq notebook for $499--it says the computer ordinarily lists for $680. To get to $299, Circuit City gives consumers a $280 instant rebate at the store and a coupon for a $100 mail-in rebate ($680 minus $380 comes to $299).

The Vonage subscription is a novel twist. Often, retailers will offer $99 PCs but require that consumers subscribe to 12 months of ISP service, usually from AOL. In this case, the price of the PC is partly subsidized through phone service.

[Alex_nb185]

One question about this laptop

Ok so i have a very pimped out desktop and when i say that...i am not exaggerating. Anyway i need a crummy laptop for web-browsing and word docs. and possibly dvds. This one will do the trick and at $99 I can't pass it up. But i had a question...is it only $99 with the vonage subscription, and if so do you have to pay for it, and also on that note can i cancel it after it is over...so it doesn't continue to charge me. I know those questions may be obvious but i have never used anything like vonage so i wouldn't know i would like an e-mail or post answering my question. Thanks to anyone that helps.
E-mail: [e-mail]

[james00707]

Read the terms...

You will have to pay for the Vonage subscription, probably up front with the purchase of the laptop, and they WILL try to automatically renew at the end of the term. BUT- you will have no obligation to continue past the term length that you are contractually obligated to. The cancellation details will probably entail any number of hoops for you to jump through in order to get the service actually cancelled, but they cannot continue to bill you once you have demanded cancellation. Having said that, you may find Vonage worth keeping, they have good service and if you make long distance calls through a land line it is definitely cheaper. Overall, this seems like a good deal to me...

[markyoda]

Global Competition for Cheap Laptops

There are many individuals working on cheap laptops due to global competitiveness. I know that some manufacturers send out the parts if it is possible for the user to fix the problem themselves. Purchasing a laptop from an authorized business reduces your own risk of a bad deal. And they buy the lowest grade laptops which are treated as disposables. Laptops are accessible from a variety of retailers and directly by manufacturers. This system is the laptop for gamers because of its extensive features. Purchasing a cheap laptop for filtering junk mail may not be the best option.

For more info go here!

http://really-cheap-laptop.info

[JeanieNYS]

Acer Laptop

I bought a Acer Laptop from Circut City with all the bells and whistles for rebates and free items and I got the rebates on the lower priced items but they are refusing to get me my big rebate os $150.00 for my la[top. I have contacted them many times and only get the reply from them that they are looking into it and it has been several months now with no refund. I recommend no one buys from Circut City, because they don't honor all of their rebates.