BEST BUY HP zt1130 $1199 ze1110 $949 sony fx36a $1000 2/9/2002 is last day

[hans007]

saw these deals, and these seem to blow away the costco deals etc. THEY ARE AT BESTBUY

all 3 of these seem to have a $100 manufacturers rebate from sony or hp, and $100 bestbuy rebate

http://www.bestbuy.com/ComputersPeripherals/Notebooks/index.asp?m=488&cat=494
that is best buy rebate that expires 2/9/2002 for $100 off. the HP and sony rebates expires in like may 1st and feb 28th respectively so now worries on that. it says they need each their own upc's but the HP is being advertised as having 2 rebates, so i'm assuming the box has 2 UPCs


the best buy rebate expires 2/9/2002 which is today
these seem like a pretty good deals compared to some of the other laptop deals

the zt1130
its a celeron 1133mhz 256k cache 133 bus (new tualatin S based core but with no speedstep).

256mb pc133
20 gigs
via PLE133 chipset with integrated UMA savage ix chip
(i read thisisnt that great for games, but you can assign up to 32mb ram to it, savage 4 has hardware ddvd though)

20 gigs

8x dvd / 6x6x24 cdrw

5.2 pounds 1.4 inches thick
14" screen 1024x768 (unfortunately this isnt the BTO 1400x1050 screen)

has modem , lan , tv out

xp home

i am a biased HP user, but i have to say, i've sent in a laptop before because of a dead usb port. got to a human in 3 minutes on their phone system, they picked it up fedex ovenight the next day, it was fixed the day after that , shipped the day after that and i got it on the 4th day. only thing is the phone call wasnt toll free.

no firewire , but $26 for IBM TI chipset one at compgeeks.


its duron 1ghz based equivalent is $50 less after the 2 rebates. but its 133mhz slower, and no cdrw or tv out, and weighs 1.2 pounds more. also the battery on the duron is nickel hydride but lithium on the celeron one. so this probably isnt as good a deal, unless you are an amd fan boy. chipset is the KL133 it looks like with integrated savage4 also. lan and modem on this one also. 6.5 pounds 1.3 inches thick. ram and hard drive are the same as the zt1130


the sony is a bit nicer in some ways.

its a 1ghz athlon 4, which should be running neck and neck with the zt1130 i'd figure raw CPU probably a tad slower especially with 100mhz ram instead of the zt1130's 133mhz ram. also its got power now, but probably uses more power since its got a bigger screen and probably 3 times more power hungry a CPU.

its specs

a4-1ghz
256mb ram
20 gigs
6x dvd / 4x4x24 cdrw

firewire port
15" tft (1024x768 also)
lithium battery
modem / lan / no tv out

noteable is it has a radeon mobility so this is like a radeon VE on a laptop basically
7.2 pounds 2.0 inches thick though.


its probably using the KT133E chipset. pretty good deal, but kinda heavy and sony's service and support department is known to be pretty bad. but it is very cheap . i suppose that this particular "look" and design is pretty old, since sony hasn't refreshed the FX/FXA series in a while (in fact the FX series is discontinues all p3s moved to the new GR series) but this is probalby the best gaming machine of these 3.

 

[emanon]

hmmmm...are these deals occurring anywhere in particular?

 

[hans007]

i wrote best buy at the top, with best buy rebate, but well it wasnt very clear sorry

 

[kevin80]

Thanks for the info! That sony one sounds pretty good. Question - I see one rebate from Sony but the BestBuy one seems to have expired. Do you know of a different one?

 

[emanon]

Thanks! B&M, I assume?

 

[hans007]

its on the website. ground shipping is free on HP laptops only. Ify ou click "rebates" on each notebook it has the rebates that go with it. you can print them. the sony link has an expired best buy rebate from 2/2/2002. but just click on one of the other rebates and you'll find the non - expired version. the best buy rebate is $100 good on any notebook they sell.


http://www.bestbuy.com/rebatecenter/policypu.asp?o=23758&e=11099322&s=4477578

best buy rebate is that link. expires on the 9th which is today. so well buy your notebooks today then

 

[emanon]

<deleted>

 

[hans007]

the sony laptop
$1199

http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11086722&m=488&cat=494&scat=495




the sony $100 rebate

http://www.bestbuy.com/rebatecenter/policypu.asp?o=20314&e=11086722&s=4304256

best buy rebate is in my other posts for $100 also


no free shipping on sony, only on the HPs. dont know if you can pick this up in stores, probably you can to save shipping

 

[hans007]

the sony isnt advertised as having $100 off best buy rebate, but if you go on the main notebook page

http://www.bestbuy.com/ComputersPeripherals/Notebooks/index.asp?m=488&cat=494


it says the $100 off best buy rebate is on ALL laptops.

 

[hans007]

the duron is actually $949. $1149 - $100 - $100 + free shipping on HPs.

http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11099317&m=488&cat=494&scat=495


i screwed up earlier. it seems for $250 less than the zt1130 this may be a good deal also albeit no burner, crappy battery, no tv out, but thats dirt cheap however the sony is worth it for $50 more so still no good relative to the sony

 

[tvarad]

Staples has a pretty good deal on a 1.06 Celeron 15" notebook with DVDROM for $925+tax. Go to this page and scroll down to the one that says special buy. You can add two more coupons. I added a $30 off coupon that's floating on the net as well as one for a free $30 camera and it came to $1030 delivered after upgrading to a SXGA+ screen for $50 extra. If you miss the link, it's on the second page of their notebook category.

Don't know how long it's going to last, though.

 

[wfay]

tvarad's deal @ staples is pretty sweet...

but this concerns me somewhat:
Additional Drive Not a customizable option
Diskette Drive Not included

no disk drive? seems odd. i guess you could get a usb disk drive to use with it but thats another $50+ and the best buy lappies come w/disk drives.

anyways, just mentioning it...
wayne

 

[tvarad]

wfay, this machine is mainly for web surfing so I am not going to miss it (I last used my floppy about a year ago to fish out some files that were nearly 10 years old). YMMV.

BTW, they didn't charge me shipping even though they mention it on their webpage.

 

[hans007]

its got a modular bay thing for floppies i believe

 

[emanon]

Well, I was interested in the FXA36...however, I couldn't get the Best Buy $100 rebate to work. I emailed them last night regarding this - waiting to see their response.

I went by the local Best Buy today, and found that they no longer have this model on the shelf - hoping I can still jump on one at the $1000 price point! I was thinking if they still had 'em on the retail front, it'd be a good use for the 10% off coupon this Friday. I don't think there's any way to take advantage of the 10% coupon online.

 

[emanon]

Just wanted to say THANKS - got my Sony FXA36 delivered from Best Buy today - $1199, minus $100 from Sony rebate, minus another $100 from Best Buy rebate. Not long listed as available on the website, but still a hella-fine deal if you can find one in your local store. (Especially this weekend with the additional 10% off!)

I should also add that the Best Buy website lists a $100 rebate on all Athlon-based notebooks this week...not sure what your success would be if the machine was purchased in a B&M, but it couldn't hurt to try.

15" screen, 20GB, 256MB, Athlon 4 @ 1GHz, 8xDVD,8x4x24 CD, nic, modem, Firewire, 2-usb, TV-out, and a bunch of other stuff. Excellent deal! Now to figure out what to do with the HP I ordered from Staples on Monday as a contingency plan! (trying to cancel it, but they're none too receptive...)

 

[hans007]

for all of your who bought any of these laptops, i have 2 256mb pc133 sodimms that will work on these if you want for $76 shipped. PM me . they are high density so they dont work on intel chipsets but they should work on these

 

[namlook]

Man, that Sony FXA36 weighs like 7.2 pounds though. That will break your back. The HP from Staples weighs 2 pounds less! It may not seem like much of a difference but it is.

 

[hans007]

i read reviews that the HP intergrated video , seriously cripples its speed compared to a non intergrated one. it is a LOT lighter though. and looks nicer i think. i personally buy almost all HP products for their service quality, but i dunno if i'd buy a zt1130 unless it was really cheap

 

[namlook]

Where did you read reviews on the ZT1000 series? I couldn't find any reviews because it's so new. Or are you referring to older HP models? The Staples deal was around $868 for me for a 14.1", 1.06Ghz, 512 megs, 20 gb, 8x DVD, upgraded 8 cell li-ion battery, 10/100 nic. That's pretty cheap.

The new models have S3 Savage4 AGP4X 3D graphics chipset with up to 32MB of configurable shared video memory. Obviously it's no Geforce or Radeon but I'd be curious how that benchmarks configured with the full 32 megs. If you have 512 MB I don't think you'll miss the 32 megs.

Did some searching and found this in a newsgroup:

"The S3 savage is fine for games (better than the ati mobility) that aren't too demanding. UT, Half Life and Colin McCrae 2 all run fine on my laptop at 1024x768 at 16bit."

If it can run UT acceptably at 1024 that's not bad as it's really not meant to be a gaming machine.

 

[hans007]

if you go to the HP support forums. there are a lot of peopl ethere who seriously hate the zt series . they usually bring up how the video sucks ass and how it can barely run dvds or something. what i remember was they said the 1.2 ghz version was about as fast as a 1ghz compaq but the compaq had a radeon mobility (they were talking about the presario 1700 i believe) . all the HPs have shared video, and the duron one comes with a nimh crap battery. i read in the support forum that the graphics driver is better on certain versions that you need to download with xp. at lesat they used the good integrated chipset. i personally dont think it could be that bad as some of them gave it glowing reviews. but i do believe there would be a performance hit

they could have use the VIA pl/kl series or the pm/km series, and they got the m series with savage video instead of of so craptastic trident blade xp video . granted some of the people there are idiots and are complaining that the video looks funny because they run at like 800x600 on e a xga+ screen or suspend doesnt work

 

[DAICA]

All of HPs notebooks comes with lithium ion batteries also even on the duron based system.
Oh, btw the way the reason you got someone on the other line so fast hans007 is because the call was not toll free. It gives them the opportunity to have more agents on the phones instead of paying for your call. And under normal circumstances the longest you ever have to wait to talk to tech support is 3 min.

some of these HP units have shared memory that you can alocate up to 32MB off system memory.

 

[namlook]

Looks like the video problems people are complaining about with the ZT series are pretty much with the higher end models like those with SXGA and SXGA+ (ie 1400 x 1050 screens). The shared video seems to have problems handling the load at such a high resolution. I don't think the XGA (1024 x 768) screens have the same problem. So I think those of us who ordered the Staples model with the 14" XGA screen are going to be ok.