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Best Buy's Next $250 Laptop Isn't a Netbook

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:13:40 -0600

Best Buy today announced the launch of its “holiday computing selection” spanning nine different brands. Although the lineup is said to include over 30 notebooks, six netbooks, 17 desktops and four all-in-ones from some of the top brands, the retailer seems to have reserved the spotlight for a $249 Acer laptop. After all, it is Best Buy’s “lowest-advertised-price laptop” ever.

The retailer is hoping that the $249 will appeal to “value-conscious consumers.” But don’t expect the laptop to set any new performance benchmarks, for it features an insipid cocktail containing an Intel Celeron 900 CPU, 2GB memory, and a 160GB hard drive. The $249 Acer notebook will go on sale tomorrow, along with the rest of Best Buy’s holiday computing lineup.

United and JetBlue to Offer Discounted Flights Via Twitter

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:40:39 -0500

In between the random thoughts and pictures of people’s cats on Twitter, there are some gems to be found. Among those gems are celebrity feuds, our very own Will Smith giving things away, and now cheap airfare.

JetBlue and United Airlines have begun offering “Cheeps” and “twares,” respectively, in an effort to load off empty seats for low prices. JetBlue’s first Cheep was a $9 one-way flight from JFK to Nantucket, and since then they’ve have repeated success. “By promoting the Cheeps through Twitter, we give the already spontaneous audience of Twitter users a chance to grab great last-minute fares,” stated Morgan Johnston, a JetBlue spokesman.

Apparently these tickets have become quite popular, too. According to Robin Urbanski, a United spokeswoman, “Twares are all about surprising our customers with low fares for a very, very limited time. They sell extremely fast because the prices are unbeatable.”

If you’re interested in getting in on the fun, be sure to check out JetBlue’s Cheep Twitter account here, and United’s account here.

Image Credit: Twitter, JetBlue

Sprint Introduces the 99-Cent Netbook

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:20:56 -0500

A $1 netbook sounds like a Third World fantasy. Ironically, such a netbook has become a reality in the US. Sprint and Best Buy have combined forces to sell the Compaq Mini 110c-1040DX Netbook for 99 cents.

The only caveat being that interested persons will have to opt for a two-year service contract with Sprint Nextel, which costs $1,440 and offers 5GB of data.

The same netbook, which features a 1.60GHz Intel Atom processor, 10-inch screen and 160 HDD, is also being offered by AT&T and Verizon along with a two-year contract for $199. Its actual price is $389.

Asus Reduces Price of 7-inch, 8.9-inch Eee PCs to Clear Inventory

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:30:54 -0500

Asustek seems to have grown tired of the 7-inch and 8.9-inch Eee PCs in its inventory. Perhaps that is why it has decided to slash the prices of the said netbooks. The 7-inch Eee PCs are now available for a meager sum of $153 in Taiwan. The 8.9-inch Eee PC 900A has had its price trimmed down to $219 in China. Benson Lin, president of Asustek’s Asia Pacific division, had earlier this year told Digitimes that the company would completely phase out its 8.9-inch Eee PC netbooks in 2009.

OLPC Switches to VIA Processors

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:20:59 -0500

The One Laptop per Child project has chosen Via’s low-wattage C7-M processor for a revised version of its XO laptop. The inexpensive XO laptop currently ships with AMD’s Geode LX processor, but AMD has decided to retire the processor. OLPC has made it clear that the Via-powered XO laptop - which the OLPC has dubbed “Generation 1.5” – will not be a major hardware refresh.

"The design goal is to provide an overall update of the system within the same ID and external appearance," OLPC’s VP of hardware development, John Watlington, announced on Friday. The revised version, which is due in November, will feature 1GB DDR2 SDRAM (currently 256MB) and up to 8GB flash storage (currently 1GB). OLPC will abandon the x-86 processor platform and adopt an ARM-based processor in its stead as part of its Generation 2.0 refresh.

Subscription Subsidies Make the Dell Mini a Cheap Buy

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:09:13 -0600

If you are considering a netbook purchase and count the Dell Mini 9 as one of your options, you would be glad to hear that it can be yours for a paltry sum of $99. Any netbook is irresistible when it carries such a dirt cheap price tag.

However, don’t think that Dell is going to allow you to have your cake and eat it too. The hefty subsidy is only available when you opt for a two-year AT&T Laptop Connect agreement. To avail of this offer, which will last until January 31, you will have to mail in a $350 Dell rebate.

Image Credit: TCM Magazine

Backlight Manufacturers: LED Prices to Drop 40-50% in 2009

Andy Salisbury — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:07:06 -0600

Major notebook vendors like Dell and Apple are going to have a much easier time delivering those beautiful LED backlit screens in the near future, as the price of LEDs are projected to go down by 50%.

While the amount of notebooks that actually had LED backlighting in them was only 5-6% in the first three quarters of this year, that’s expected to shoot all the way up to 25% during this fourth quarter. Even still, it’s projected that up to 40% of notebooks will have LED backlighting in 2009.

At the current rate, it looks like LED backlighting will be standard sometime real soon. That’s a bright future that we look forward to.

Image Credit: Apple, Inc.

$800 Budget PC Buyer’s Guide -- Updated Prices and Parts For October 2008

Benson Hong — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:00:00 -0500

As some of you may recall, we featured a Budget Badass Buyer’s Guide at the beginning of the month to provide some guidance to those looking for solid performance at what we, Maximum PC, would consider to be a reasonable price. We read your responses to the build and many felt that $1500 was a bit over what the typical user would consider “budget.” So, we took it a step further and created a Budget PC below the $1500 mark. In fact, we even dropped it under $1000. At $800, we couldn’t quite figure out if it would even be possible to construct a PC that could play the latest games or even do some basic photo-manipulation in Photoshop. We stepped up to the challenge and built this Budget PC and put it to the test against our hardcore, $5000 machines to see how they match up.

Since we are still in the process of assembling the rig, benchmarks have yet to be run. For now, we give you our parts list. Check back soon for the results from our tests!

(Prices as listed on Newegg)

Videocard

Visiontek Radeon HD 4850
$185, www.visiontek.com

Named the Best of the Best mid-range video card, the Visiontek Radeon HD 4850 offers everything you need in a sub-$200 video card. Don't be afraid to toss the latest games at this GPU, just don't expect Crysis to amaze you with anything over 10 FPS.

Motherboard

MSI P45 Neo3
$110, www.msicomputer.com

Sporting Intel's latest P45 chipset, the P45 Neo3 is a toned down version of the popular P45 Platinum. The board only has one 16x PCI-E slot leaving the idea for SLI or Crossfire in the dust, but with our budget at $800, adding another video card to the equation is definitely out of the question.

CPU

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz Wolfsdale
$170 (Retail), www.intel.com

A few years ago, purchasing a PC with a Pentium 4 3GHz processor for under $800 was nearly impossible. Now, we can easily slip in a Core 2 Duo at a fairly low price. The E8400 Wolfsdale core features a 6MB L2 cache and 45nm technology allowing for a larger memory bandwidth. The chip also has massive overclocking potential.

Memory

Corsair 2GB DDR2 800
$37, www.corsair.com

We've recommended 4GB in our past build-it guides for the hardcore users, but with a budget of $800, 2GB will suffice for this system. With quality memory from Corsair, the XMS series will provide great performance for the budget user.

Case, power supply, hard drive, and optical drive on the next page!

Case

Antec Three Hundred
$55, www.antec.com

Antec has always had a solid series of chassis. While the Three Hundred lacks a few features such as screwless mounting and a fairly cramped interior, it still offers plenty of cooling and a sturdy design. And for $55, we can't really complain since it's half the price of its budget case rival, the NZXT Tempst.

Power Supply

Antec EarthWatts 500W
$50, www.antec.com

We're usually a little weary on "green" hardware for our PCs, but the EarthWatts series from Antec is no joke when it comes to energy efficiency. With its 80 PLUS Certification and stable power output, not only will you be saving money building your PC, but you'll also be saving on your energy bill.

Operating System

Windows Vista 32-bit Home Basic
$100 (OEM), www.microsoft.com

Ubuntu Linux
Free, www.ubuntu.com

Hard Drive

Seagate 500GB Barracuda
$70, www.seagate.com

Seagate's popular Barracuda series has still yet to disappoint. So, when we were looking for a budget hard drive, we first turned to this 500GB Barracuda. 500GB may not be enough storage for the hardcore users out there, but it is plenty to the average user.

Optical Drive

Samsung SH-S223F DVD Burner
$26, www.samsung.com

We've hyped up this drive for the past few build-it guides. With it's solid performance and affordable price, we feel this burner is suitable for any system or budget.