Comments on: About that $300 laptop at Wal-Mart...

Crave goes searching for the Compaq CQ50-139WM, a laptop that Wal-Mart was selling for $298 in some stores on Saturday, November 8.

[Maruuk]

The Athlon? 2650e in the Best Buy eMachines (there's a stalwart brand for ya) $299 special runs at 1.6Mz. Same as an Atom CPU in the little netbooks. The Celeron in the Compaq runs at 2.0. Also the eMachines has 1G of memory, the Compaq has 2. That's a big difference in memory-hungry Vistaland and can really benefit performance. A 1G upgrade of the eMachines will cost you $75+ (if you do it yourself...good luck with that!). The eMachines has a 14" screen. The Compaq has the larger 15.4 screen. The eMachines looks like a cheap, bargain basement blowout item. The Compaq looks like a classy $1,000+ product.

There's really no comparison.

[Cironnu]

My mother and sister each picked up one (at $298) at our local Walmart, about sixty miles away from Kansas City. They're far from cutting edge, of course, but still perfectly good for websurfing, watching a DVD, etc.

[markb1967]

My friend bought one, and asked me to add some software to it for her. I was surprised that it was mostly metal, I was expecting cheap plastic. Anyway, it was average speed, and the screen looked really nice, sound was ok, and battery life was average. My favorite part was the mouse pad, all metal, cool to the touch and very smooth...

[greyghost255]

A buddy of mine got one of these laptops. Looks pretty good for a 300 dollar laptop. As for features. It's bare bones so you kinda get what you pay for.

[raptor99]

I arrived at the Toms River NJ about 5:45 AM and was about 10th in line. There were a few who camped out overnight. By about 6:45 AM there were about 50 in line which worked out well for everyone because they had about 50 in stock ( I went the night before and talked to one of the associates, she said she saw the pallet in the back stockroom.

The laptop is descent for a $298 laptop. 2 Ghz Celeron but the 2 GB of RAM make up for it. Perfect if you are looking for a laptop to browse the Internet, email or some word processing. It's not going to replace your desktop however. If you're looking for a gaming laptop or a laptop to do video editing on, forget it. It has a 160 GB drive which is not bad and a dual layer DVD burner (which I found to be alittle flimsy). I was impressed with the screen brightness and with the audio surprisingly. Music sounds better on this than a colleagues Dell XPS (go figure).

Bottom line, it is worth the $298 so if they have this sale again (and they may, Black Friday still didn't come yet) I would pick one up!!

[cheap06]

I picked up one in my small town. They said they had about 54 for sale and there where only about 30 people there. I purchased on and so did my father. We are holding out though to see if we can find a better deal on Black Friday. The overall looks and system does not seem that bad but who knows I could be wrong.

As a side note we did get up at 6AM to wait in line. I got 8th in line and he was 15th.

[mckaybh]

Why are people acting like this is something other than a fantastic deal? It's a 15" laptop with an older processor but otherwise pretty decent stats for THREE HUNDRED BUCKS!! Oh wait, I just realized why people are complaining -- because they paid twice as much for the same thing or 3 or 4 times as much for something only slightly better.

I was looking for a cheap laptop to hook up to my TV. I don't think cable is worth $100 a month. VGA to tv, headphone jack to tv, wireless internet with a high speed connection. . . . voila! Tons of free content, some in high def. Netflix instant movies. iTunes for HBO stuff I like. DVD player. Sports for a little extra charge. ESPN 360 for free.

Yes, it might die early, but well worth the risk at the price. Amazing deal. Look for more like this during this recession holiday season.

[keriheb]

Wal_Mart had 40 of them in the store on the sale date which were all gone within 30 minutes of them being placed on sale. Other Wal_Mart stores in this town did not carry them this long at all. They were sold out immediately. IF it is a first come first sale event then the public should be made aware of this. It is only hype to get people into the store.

[ironless14]

I bought this laptop for the advertised price on Saturday and so far it works great. Vista runs great on it and I've already burned a few DVD's. I just have one question: what's wrong with the Celeron processor?

[Maruuk]

Nothing wrong with it, it's just relatively slow and not suitable for things like gaming, video editing/rendering and heavy Photoshop tasks. But it can handle most day-to-day operations just fine.

[Maruuk]

BTW, what happened to Matt Elliot's "First Take" review on this Compaq that he references above? It seems to have disappeared off the First Take pages, along with the user reviews linked to it. Weird.

[tcdmississippi]

I picked one up for my daughter. They had 60 of them at our local Walmart here in Biloxi MS. The price was as 298.00.

[Rohou]

Seems like the Asus Eee Netbook is better anyway. So go to target instead.

[Maruuk]

Ever tried to type on an 8.9" netbook? May as well use your thumbs like texting. And the screen size is so tiny you end up squinting like Clint Eastwood. The smallest practical size screenwise and keyboard size-wise is a 10", which is why all the manufacturers are moving in that direction.

Netbooks below 10" are okay for email and very limited browsing (the pages don't fit) and quick notes. But they are not productivity devices. Unless you like the cross-eyed look. Anybody considering one please try them out at a store, don't take my word for it. Try to imagine you are going to get something done on it. I think you'll discover they are shockingly small and impractical.

The 10s just barely cross the bar into useability. The new netbook standard is going to be the 10-12" range.

[riotten22]

They are all on EBAY! Over 245 brand new Compaq CQ50-139WM laptops listed that is crazy.

[red_b17]

I bought one of these $300 laptops. Mainly for the screen size. I have a 2 year old Dell XPS 1210 with a 12 inch screen diagonally. I can really use the larger screen when multitasking. The computer is sturdy, well made, and doesn't feel any less reliable than my $1200 dell. All these reliability issues are baseless. It's cheaper and you end up with a better user experience to buy cheap computers and replace them more often, than to purchase a $3000 super laptop and keep it for a much longer period of time. I will say it's hot, I will say the screen has horrible aspect ratio, (or whatever you call it when you can't see it unless you are facing it head on.) But the battery lasts about 3 hours under my normal uses, which is about what I get out of the much more expensive machine. Upgrading my XPS 1210 to match the specs of this compaq would have cost me more than what I spent on a completely new laptop. Yes it's slow, But I don't use it for heavy lifting. I love how relaxed it makes me not having to worry about it getting stolen, or broken, or dieing. If something bad happens, no biggie, I'll just get a new one. It was cheap, and disposable. Taking care of an investment on a computer is a pain. I'm very happy, and I only got up 30 minutes before it went on sale. Thank you cnet, for the tip on the great deal.

[sea_blue]

I bought this computer at a Walmart in Mississippi for $298. I had read about it on the Walmart Online Website. I bought it for my 10 year old grandson. I think it'll be just fine for him.

[marlk_05]

Just For the Record and other than vista being a little sluggish i love my compaq cq and i have had other compaqs before...i think its worth the $300 or even $500 for a good screen, dvd cd burner, nice design, and full featured applications. And if you want it to run super smooth you could downgrade to xp or shell out an extra hundred for more ram and memory since your saving alot anyways! = )

[lexam263]

We bought 2. His and her laptops. They aren't sluggish at all. And you can always install Ubuntu. I haven't yet but maybe...

[ziggz501]

you get what you pay for. if your in the market for a laptop and only want to spend $300 then don't bother and save up some more. i work on computers from day to day, and there is a vast difference between a cheap computer and a nice one.
and to the writer of the article, a regular computer will have longer battery life than a netbook period. believe it or not, the actual size of the battery makes a difference. and unfortunately, the only power saver on most netbooks is the lower power processor. they don't tend to have a screen dim, or wifi switch, so their battery life tends to be around 1 - 1.5 hours. a regular laptop on the other hand, with the screen dimmed and wifi off can work for almost 3 hours, if not more.