Toshiba Laptop - 2Ghz Celeron, 30gb HD, 256MB RAM, 15" LCD, DVD, CD-RW, 56k, ethernet, and more for $699 AR @ Best Buy

[DeviousTrap]

Specs are as follows:

15" TFT active-matrix display
30.0GB enhanced-IDE hard drive
256MB DDR RAM
Integrated Intel® 852GM graphics controller with 32MB DDR SDRAM video memory; Direct 3D support and Direct Video
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet LAN
8x DVD-Rom Drive
24x CD-RW
V.92 high-speed modem with data and fax support
Weighs about 6 lbs./1.5" thin for easy portability; removable, rechargeable LiIon battery with AC adapter
Windows XP Home Edition operating system preinstalled

Link

$999
-$50 (Instant Rebate)
-$100 (BB Rebate)
-$100 (Toshiba Celeron rebate)
-$50 (Toshiba Rebate)
=$699 + tax

Not all the rebates are shown in the link but they are advertised in the local Weekly ad.

 

[Sandor]

6.1 lbs as well- nice deal

 

[yhelothar]

ok deal...
you can get the averatec athlonxp-m 1600+ that weighs half as much and with twice as much ram for $50 more... it even comes with built in WLAN

 

[jrichrds]

Originally posted by: virtualgames0
ok deal...
you can get the averatec athlonxp-m 1600+ that weighs half as much and with twice as much ram for $50 more... it even comes with built in WLAN

And a 12.1" screen. I'd happily take the Averatec specs with a 15" screen. It seems all the thin/light laptops with 15" screens come at a hefty premium.

For comparison, many people got in on a similar Toshiba laptop at Best Buy last December for $650AR. It had a slower CPU (1.8Ghz instead of 2.0Ghz) but a faster graphics processor (nVidia Geforce4 GO with 16MB dedicated DDR instead of Intel integrated with shared memory). Both are good laptops, Toshiba-designed and manufactured unlike some of their outsourced Compal-made models. And a mobile Celeron instead of the desktop Celerons used in other brand's budget lines (such as the Dell Inspiron).

 

[Rupster]

Not a bad lappie - i think I'm goin for this one - thanks

 

[pilgrim2u]

I bought a toshiba laptop from CC.

It took over 6 months for the rebate to get here :-(

be patient :-(

 

[DeviousTrap]

Just a bump for more people to see this.

 

[LilHen]

not bad at all

 

[nugglife4me]

I picked up a presario 2100 around presidents day at BB for about this same price. Don't know about the Toshiba but on the presario the HD is limiting factor. It is 30 gb 4500rpm w/NO CACHE. plus it has "mobile radeon" graphics which is aka as the IGM 340 I think. Anyone know of a place to see features/comparisons of lappy graphics ability? point is I like all other specs about lappy except weak graphics and hd performance. hd can be upgraded easily but I haven't seen anyone selling an upgrade graphics processor avail in a "mini pci" form factor which is what the small slot on the back of my presario is purported to hold. BTW I can run UT2k3 at 800x600 with med settings other options and it runs ok (15-30 fps) but nothing really great, yeh I know its a lappy but some newer models have quite capabale graphics porcessing options these days so you may wanna check that out depending on your needs/uses etc. just something to think about before purchasing eh.

 

[nemaNIN]

My gf needs a laptop for starting law school. she won't use it for anything other than office apps and a few mp3s...

i tried to get her to jump on that deal for that $550 laptop at best buy a few months ago.. but, alas, she missed it.

she doesn't need much power, but does anyone know of a deal for a lighter and/or cheaper laptop?
think there's any hope of those sub-$600 deals from a few months ago resurfacing soon?

thanks....

 

[dealseaker]

she doesn't need much power, but does anyone know of a deal for a lighter and/or cheaper laptop?
think there's any hope of those sub-$600 deals from a few months ago resurfacing soon?


im not a pro at this but day after thanksgiving is comming up, and laptop prices arent far from where they were last year, i think some other people mentioned previous ones, nice lappy

 

[Broohaha]

Originally posted by: virtualgames0
ok deal... you can get the averatec athlonxp-m 1600+ that weighs half as much and with twice as much ram for $50 more... it even comes with built in WLAN

can you tell us where we can find this??

 

[nautiazn85]

I was going to post about this one too, saw it on salescircular.com.

Seems like it comes with a free printer too? I think I'm going to bite... company already bought three Dell 600M but we need one more lappy for a cheap price.

(Was looking for something in the $500-$600 range, but I guess this will do)

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: Broohaha

Originally posted by: virtualgames0
ok deal... you can get the averatec athlonxp-m 1600+ that weighs half as much and with twice as much ram for $50 more... it even comes with built in WLAN

can you tell us where we can find this??

www.bestbuy.com
they have it for $949 with $200 rebate

 

[jrichrds]

Originally posted by: nugglife4me
I picked up a presario 2100 around presidents day at BB for about this same price. Don't know about the Toshiba but on the presario the HD is limiting factor. It is 30 gb 4500rpm w/NO CACHE. plus it has "mobile radeon" graphics which is aka as the IGM 340 I think.

The HD is the limiting factor in almost all modern laptops. The problem is made worse when consumers measure laptop performance primarily by CPU speed. So you get models with blazing fast CPUs but a slow 4200rpm hard drive. Notice how laptop advertisements almost never mention the speed of the hard drive. Only in high end laptops will you find 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives. A 2Ghz laptop with 4200rpm hard drive can feel slower to a general user than a desktop with less than half of the laptop's CPU speed but a 7200rpm hard drive.

As for what comes in the Presario 2100, you must mean a 30GB 4200rpm drive with 2MB cache.

I just replaced such a drive with Hitachi's brand new 5K80 40GB 5400RPM with 8MB cache. And it was a huge improvement in both speed and noise (lack of noise that is).

And for graphics...it'll be hard to find a budget laptop with a decent graphics processor using dedicated memory. Last I remember is the Toshiba Satellite laptop for $650AR from Best Buy last December. It had a nVidia GeForce4 420 GO with 16MB dedicated DDR memory.

 

[mrbuddylee]

My father-in-law bought this laptop last night, he did get a free printer with it (after another rebate). Also, Best Buy has 18 months interest free financing while you wait for the rebates to come back. I bought a similiar version after thanksgiving last year, and have had no problems with it. Rebates came in about 2 months.

 

[Wildcats]

At these laptop prices, I might need to finally unload my old eMachines 333! Any takers? : )

 

[Hawk]

The Averatec is 4 lbs, not 3 lbs, plus it only has 256 MB of RAM also. It is a nice little laptop though, I would probably get that over the Toshiba.

 

[deeznuts]

Originally posted by: nemaNIN
My gf needs a laptop for starting law school. she won't use it for anything other than office apps and a few mp3s...

i tried to get her to jump on that deal for that $550 laptop at best buy a few months ago.. but, alas, she missed it.

she doesn't need much power, but does anyone know of a deal for a lighter and/or cheaper laptop?
think there's any hope of those sub-$600 deals from a few months ago resurfacing soon?

thanks....

i don't know about any better lappies, but i do know about law school. if you get her a lappie, i suggest, if you are adept enough, to wipe that sucker right away, put on a clean OS if you have one. those packaged software causes problems. if there is only one partition, split into two, tell her to save all her documents into "My Docs" and get an automated backup software, I use second copy 2000. backs up on startup, shutdown, and any interval you would like in between. backup my docs onto the third partition. also if possible, burn all her docs onto a backup cd. i've lost hard drives (damn ibm drives) luckily i had my docs backed up.

 

[wfay]

I have the frequently mentioned (in this thread) Toshiba 1415-S173 from Best Buy purchased in Dec 2002. My 3dmarks scores are around 2700 which is pretty good considering the specs and that its a laptop. WAY WAY better than the HP I had before (300 3dmarks) which was integrated shared memory video like this $699 deal.

For the price this is a pretty nice laptop. But I prefer a nice Nvidia or ATI video chipset with dedicated video memory (even just 16Mb) over integrated cr@p, having experienced both in the last year...

 

[Techie333]

Do you guys recommend getting any service plans or warranties for this laptop?

 

[SLOviper]

The thing about their "service plan" (aka "warranty"), like all warranties is that statistically they are making money from the deal - which means that you are losing it. You're basically betting them that the laptop will break - against their bet that it won't. Since the warranty on the thing runs at $250 (35% of the laptop cost,) I wouldn't bother. It does cover the battery, but a new one of those only runs in the $100-$150 range and should be good for two years if you're not draining it every day (300-600 charges.)

And as far as coverage goes, the warranty only covers defects - no negligence or other damage (to be determined by the BB tech who inspects it.) If it did cover the screen and accidental damage, it *might* be worth it, but as it stands, not hardly.

As for a warning, the salesperson will try and sell you the warranty touting that you get a free battery when your dies in a year or so. They'll also offer you a 10% discount on all "accessories" purchased with the laptop (or 15% if you buy more than four.) Ink is included in this, so if you're not a generic user, it trims the price slightly.

Also, if you sign up for the BB Rewards program (which costs $10 for a year "membership"), you get $40 in BB Gift Certificates.

Total costs:

Laptop: $950
Tax (7.5%) $71
BB Rewards $10
MIRs -$250
GCs -$30

Total: $751 for a decent laptop (assuming they don't convince you to buy anything else ;-)

 

[nemaNIN]

thanks for the reply's.. she went for this lap top. and i plan to wipe it as soon as she gets it to install pro, office, etc. as for backups, im going to set up her important docs to sync with 2 other computers on the network im setting up whenever she connects.... so that's covered.

on those service plans. i ALWAYS get them, if i can afford it at the time, on equipment that i will be carrying around alot. best buy's extended warrentied DO, i repeat DO cover negligent user problems. i.e., if you drop the laptop and crack the screen, ruin the harddrive, etc.. they will service it free of charge. even better, most of the time, if it is anything other than the ram, you will get a REPLACEMENT laptop b/c the cost is too high to fix it. if they no longer carry the exact model you have, you will get a comparable model.

example. i bought an open boc toshiba e310 and a servie plan. i took it to europe and dropped it a bunch of times and it stopped syncing, so i took it to bb and got an even exchange to an e335. the e335 never worked the way i wanted it to, so after a couple months i took it back to bb again and i just got an even exchange to an hp2215 -- similarly priced to the original price of the e310 and similar, medium level specs, but a dreastic upgrade. so i got 2 upgrades for only $60.

there are other levels of plans. there are service (like on the laptops, in which case if its been more than one year since purchase, they will first explore fixing the item, then replace it) and replacement plans (where they just give you a credit for your original purchase price, no matter what).

if you have the money, get the extended warranty. the manu warranty only covers product defects -- the bb ones also cover human defects.


ps -- no, my gf didnt get the bb warranty... but thats b/c she's a broke student

 

[Sparty]

This deal seems to be back again this week.

 

[Tiembo]

Picked up this laptop when the original deal was posted. Bought the WiFi expansion board (around $70 shipped, and just as easy as RAM to put in), and everything's been working great since. Great deal on a 15" laptop.

Note: Windows 2000 barely works with this laptop. While the Toshiba support website says that there are Win2k drivers for this laptop, most of them don't work. After talking to their tech support, they said that XP has to be run in order to get full functionality.