Updated at 4:30 p.m. PDT: adding Windows 7 and Celeron processor information.
There's a new $299 laptop in vogue at stores--and it's not a Netbook.
Toshiba 15-inch Satellite has bounced around in price from $299 to $329
(Credit: Best Buy)These laptops sport big screens, optical drives, plenty of memory, and reasonable graphics horsepower. In other words, this is nothing like a $299 Netbook.
And, in case you haven't noticed, they sell out quickly. The $298 Wal-Mart laptop was gone before most people could reach for their wallet and the Best Buy $299 Acer laptop vanished almost overnight once the price went viral.
Best Buy chimed in again very briefly for a few days (during the week of August 3) with a $299 Toshiba laptop sporting a 15-inch screen but then bumped the price up to $329.
But whether it's a $298, $299, $309, or $329, it's a laptop design that has landed. And it is a real competitor to the 10-inch Netbook, which costs about the same.
Here's the challenge: a lot of the Netbook's appeal is price. If retailers offer something with more robust hardware in the same price range, these tiny laptops are at risk of ... Read more
Best Buy has listed a 15-inch Acer laptop with relatively robust specifications for $299. But try getting your hands on one.
Though listed among the "new arrivals" on Best Buy's Web site, it is currently not available at stores or online. But there is anecdotal evidence of its existence. Very-recent user comments indicate that people have purchased the laptop and other stores, such as Wal-Mart Stores and Amazon (which shows it in stock), list it at a higher price.
Acer laptop comes with most of the fixins' for $299
(Credit: Best Buy)And the specifications? An AMD Athlon 64 processor, 15.6-inch WXGA display, 2GB DDR2 memory, DVD-RW drive, 160GB hard disk drive, ATI Radeon Xpress 1200 graphics, 802.11b/g wireless, 10/100 Ethernet LAN, and Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition. Pretty close to mainstream-laptop hardware with the exception of the low-end AMD-ATI silicon and the older "g" wireless.
When contacted by phone, a Best Buy sales representative said the reseller has fielded a number of calls already about the laptop and confirmed that it was currently unavailable.
By comparison, what do you get for $299 when buying a diminutive Netbook? An Asus Eee PC at this price comes with an Atom N270 processor, 1GB memory, 10.1-inch screen, 160GB hard disk drive, Intel 950 graphics, a Webcam, no optical drive, and Windows XP.
And there are good deals on other, more-mainstream laptops at Best Buy. A Toshiba Satellite is listed at $349 with an Intel Celeron processor, 15.4-inch display, 2GB DDR2 memory, DVD-RW drive, 160GB hard disk drive, Intel 4500MHD graphics, 802.11b/g wireless, 10/100 Ethernet LAN, and Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition.
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Looks the same as other HP laptops, but not nearly as powerful inside.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)Editors' note: This review is part of our 2009 Retail Laptop and Desktop Back-to-School roundup, covering specific fixed configurations of popular systems that can be found in retail stores.
One thing we noticed when reviewing the lowest-priced entry-level laptops in our retail roundup was the presence of the Intel Celeron 900 processor. Showing up twice (in the Compaq CQ60-417DX and the Toshiba L305-S5955, discussed below), it's an outdated, poorly performing CPU.
The sneaky thing, however, is that this processor shows up in a chassis that also houses more highly powered machines. Perhaps this downgrading and price-cutting has been inspired by the success of Netbooks. Regardless, it can be confusing for consumers. $350 or $399 sounds like a great deal for a laptop, but is it still worth it with an processor that's not much better than a Netbook?
In our Back-to-School retail laptop roundup, we've taken a look at a few real bargain-basement machines. Along with the Toshiba Satellite L305-S5955, the Compaq Presario CQ60-417DX comes in at less than $400. Although it's 50 dollars more than the Satellite L305-S5955, it also has a larger, 15.6-inch, higher-resolution 16:9 screen, comes with a Windows 7-upgrade-eligible Windows Vista Home Premium OS, and has a keyboard and touch pad that were far more comfortable for us. But, you should be forewarned: both systems are nearly identical otherwise, and both come with a pretty bare-bones Celeron 900 processor.
However, for only $29 more, you can get a laptop with a significantly better dual-core processor in the Dell Inspiron 1545-012B, so the underpowered processor at the CQ60-417DX's core can't be overlooked. For your entry-level computing needs, we recommend looking elsewhere.
For the same price, would you rather have a larger screen and Vista, or a Netbook?
For one thing, $350 gets you a lot of bulk.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)Our back-to-school retail roundup of laptops is currently under way, and one of the machines we recently tested was the cheapest of the bunch: Toshiba's $350 L305-S5955. That's the cost of a Netbook (and some cost even less).
It's hard to hate a laptop that only costs $350. Indeed, decent televisions weren't even this cheap half a decade ago. The first question that pops into one's head when confronted with such an absurdly low number is, "What am I getting for that?" The second question is, "Can I get away with owning one?"
For a 15.4-inch laptop, what comes under the hood? Last year's L305-S5875, which cost $675 and was housed in a nearly identical case, came with a 200GB hard drive, 3GB of DDR2 RAM, and a 1.86GHz Pentium Dual-Core T2390. Therein lies the difference: this year's L305 has a 160GB hard drive, only 2GB of RAM, and an inferior Celeron 900 processor for nearly half the cost. In essence, it has the guts of a Netbook in a 15.4-inch laptop's body (the earliest Netbooks actually used Celeron chips, before Intel release the Atom processor).
While this laptop is fine for basic e-mail, media viewing, music playing, and other simple tasks, we wouldn't recommend it for any sort of multitasking or serious mission-critical computing. It's already more than a bit of a dinosaur in 2009, and it won't get any less outdated, making it a questionable investment. On the other hand, Windows 7 should run fine on it (although most new Vista Basic systems are ineligible for a free upgrade), and this could be the sort of bargain a low-expectations consumer is looking for.
Read our full review of the Toshiba L305-S5955.
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