Best Buy's $200 Black Friday PC and Other Cheap Computers
If you decide to brave the battlefield at Best Buy this year, you'll be rewarded with an opportunity to grab an eMachines PC with a 17 inch LCD monitor for the super low price of $200. Don't expect the world though. The PC is rumored to be powered by an Intel Celeron running at 2.66 Ghz (meaning no efficient and powerful 'Core' for you), comes with 512 megabytes of RAM (which is the bare minimum for doing just about anything on a computer these days), has a measly 80 Gigabyte hard drive, and it has no DVD burner.
Don't get us wrong -- $200 is still a heck of a price, but you could get so much more, or at least more interesting for a tad more cash. For instance, Wal-Mart is selling their own $200 PC without monitor. The gPC, as it's called, runs Linux instead of the resource-hungry Vista and uses an ultra low-power (and carbon-neutral) processor from Via. Or, how about the diminutive and cheap Eee from Asus which is also powered by Linux (noticing a trend here?). Priced from $200 to $400, these little laptops let you get all your basic computing tasks done by focusing on web applications.
Or, if you're in the market for something truly different, head on over to Laptop.org and you can get yourself one of the OLPC XOs (also Linux powered). These tiny, innovative convertible laptops are meant for kids in developing nations, but for a limited time you can order one for yourself as long as you're willing to pay for two. The second one gets sent to a child in the third world on your dime. In that case, $400 gets you a technological marvel, a piece of history, and a warm, fuzzy feeling.
From Engadget
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kevin said 7:01AM on 11-13-2007
Great deal. Now the majority of the population that doesn't need allthe extras can finally get a decent computer for a good price. Let all the techies and people needing power hungry programs pay for the advances, let the masses get their computers for a reasonable price.
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Hank said 8:15AM on 11-13-2007
I have always recycled my monitor mouse and keyboard and upgraded items along the way. A good thing to do is to buy a barebones PC and build it from there. A BB is a tower, motherboard, Processor and memory. You can add the rest if you already have it!
www.shoptechnow.com
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Paula said 8:46AM on 11-13-2007
Yeah, all the leaked 2007 black Friday deals are interesting.
I hope they're true:
http://www.paulanealmooney.com/category/black-friday-2007-deals/
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Blinky said 8:59AM on 11-13-2007
As figured,,Best Buy is unloading outdated junk
rather than throw it away. Wait til you have to hunt around for stuff when you decide to upgrade.
Then the real nightmare will begin.
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Mark the Spark said 9:36AM on 11-13-2007
Look folks, I do not know what planet people are from who are inspired to hit the retailers on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Fact is the media coverage makes me puke. Better you tell the retailers, who put the screws to you all year, to go f-themselves and buy nothing. Amazing as it sounds, buy nothing...
Check out http://adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/ and do something other than go mindless shopping...
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Raj said 9:42AM on 11-13-2007
It is so amazing at the hjype! Bets buy is always 20% higher than everyone else in Computers, Software, DVD's, so on! They imnstruct their employees to sell the Rewards Mastercard which has a lousy percentage rate and the rewards are limited to what and when!!!! They also saty in business by shlepping the accessories, Power supplys that eat electricity, make horrible noise when activated of a power failure and can easily be replaced by a 7 dollar power stripe! Also they cost and enormous amount and employee discout is 2/3rds less which tells you what hey are really worth.
If you want a computer, I would suggest Dell online! They even bought Alienware! And if you hadn't noticed lately the ugly exteriors of computers, then just check out an Alienware and you'll see what designing is all about. Yes they are pricey but top of the line hardware for gaming and anything else!
Best buy is for the weak minded, all that crao they sell with the computers is not necessary. Have you ever tried to get service done??? You can get a good computer for $700.00 that will run most anything and if it blows up in two years, well that's the time to get a new one and the very way the industry is set up! Anybody saying otherwise is a staged Bets Buy employee paid to blog good things about them!
I have a PC for games and an apple for surffing ,(NO VIRUSES)! It's true, had it a year and it runs as fast as ever!
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Donna said 9:57AM on 11-13-2007
http://www.kickitback.com/?how=addalink&rid=18138
Check this out! Get cash back on all youd Ebay purchases this holiday season!
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Sandy said 10:10AM on 11-13-2007
I'm a teacher in a rural area. Only about 25% of my kids have a computer at home and I don't have one in the classroom. What about giving to these kids here at home?
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Raj said 10:28AM on 11-13-2007
It's no wonder you people have no jobs and have other countries doing your jobs! You are to easy, to gullable! I mean , well, you elected Bush and now you all think like him! Stand up like the stories of USA of old! Demand better!
This crap is just sales pitches to get you in! It's worthless! Go to school, read technical specs. You will be so disapointed if you buy this crap!
I once hased a Motorcycle dealer what the differences were in the prices of his Helmets, some were cheaap, others kind of expensive! He replied, "How much is your head worth"!
Your dollar only goes so far, get all you can for it and if it means spending a little more for quality and performance, do it.
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Bonnie said 10:52AM on 11-13-2007
Hey, I'm a gamer geek with an 80g HDD and I do just fine. My father is a "normal" user and his 80g is fine too. Not everyone needs the 320g external HDD these days.
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extremely over it said 8:47AM on 11-14-2007
shoving and craming the junk down the clients throats while the most money can be scraped out of them. america needs to stop buying into it
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sandy said 11:21AM on 11-13-2007
DO NOT BUY this computer. I purchased a $400
Ecomputer for my grandson and it lasted exactly
1 1/2 years. Best Buy wanted $500 to fix it!!!
They are junk. Better off, to save your $
for something worthwhile.
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suzanne said 11:34AM on 11-13-2007
PEOPLE...BUY AMERICAN IF YOU CAN...MADE IN AMERICA BY AMERICANS...OUR U.S. DOLLAR IS FAST DEFLATING...OUR NATIONAL DEBT IS FLOATED BY CHINA, IMAGINE THAT, A COMMUNIST COUNTRY OWNS OUR FREEDOM LOVING DEMOCRATIC ARSES! P.S.- IF YOU WANT CHEAPER PRICES DEMAND IT BY NOT FALLING FOR THIS HYPE AND PROPOGANDA!
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jared bartelt said 4:11PM on 11-13-2007
theonly problem is they will only have like 25 per store and when you have hundreds if not thousands of people waiting to get into the store they dont last very long
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Henry Duchene said 11:46AM on 11-13-2007
Beware if anyone wants to buy a computer at WalMart. I bought one in August 2007. It started giving me problems six weeks later and WalMart will not do anything about it because it was past their 15-day warranty. WalMart told me that it was my problem and to contact the computer company but did not know how I should contact the computer company. I finally got hold of ACER web site and six weeks later I'm still dealing with a company that does not want to help me. I have a new computer that worked for six weeks and now no one wants to fix it. It's the last electric item I buy at Wal Mart. Next time I'll pay a few more dollars at Gateway but I know that there is service after the sale.
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Gina said 12:36PM on 11-13-2007
If you shop Ebay, you can get cash back on all your purchases. It's a new reward program they have partnered with through activa.
http://kickitback.com/default.aspx?rid=18480
~Gina
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Zain said 10:37PM on 11-18-2007
Best Buy is the place to shop this holiday season without any doubt. With their promise of Guaranteed WOW, a complete soloution bringing families togather over the holidays is going to be of the hook. Every store, is planning to hit that 1 MILLION DOLLAR MARK over the "GREEN FRIDAY", it is going to be an absoloute craze. Deals, like 399 SONY LAPTOP, Cheap memory, Free Guitar HERO with Xbox, great MINIDV CAMERA FOR 149, Radeon 2600 Card for 99 , 500 GB external HD for 99. THE WOW is GUARANTEED PEOPLE, every single WITH INSTANT I MEAN INSTANTTTT, no mail in rebates no jokes. Great Deals, SO PEOPLE as a BEST BUY EMPLOYEE and writing on my own not a supervisor or a manger just a BEST BUY EMPLOYEE, i will welcome you at 4AM in the morning .. everysingle one of you in front of my STORE about 2000 of YOU!!! So gear up get ur JACKETS OUT, and come to BEST BUY for the Best Deals in the whole RETAIL.
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JOSEPH said 11:40AM on 1-22-2008
I bought an eMachine from Best Buy four years ago, 40 gig hard drive. I just added a 512 memory stick to speed it up a little more.
It has done absolutely everything I have wanted it to do. I do banking, ordering, emailing, up and download pictures. Use Adobe photo, Word, Microsoft Money, No Games, bottom line, this little sucker has run like a top. I have Comcast as my provider, with McAfee protection through AOL. AOL and McAfee are FREE people. Comcast is broad band as you probably know. The Up and Down Speeds are fine.
I love this eMachine and have no intention of getting anything else at this time.
Joe is a happy boy.
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mfarmer said 3:07PM on 1-22-2008
I too bought a computer in Sept of 07 from Walmart, an HP, which is supposed to be very good. Wrong. The end of Sept if it was turned off it didn't want to come back on. Had it checked at a computer shop, my expense, they said stuff was running in the background, where it came from no one knows, they cleaned it out. I only had abou 3 weeks, and yes Walmart would not take it back after 15 days, contact HP they said. It worked for a few days and then started again. Called HP, again and again and finally got a hold of someone that said they could check it out. They sent a box for it to be sent to Irving Tx, which they still have it. Don't know if it will be fixed when I get it back. No more HP, the next one will be a DELL. So don't buy any electronics from Walmart or take it back before 15 days are up.
Thanks for letting me air my comments.
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