Budget laptops at $199 price point by Xmas 2014?

[JEDI]

http://www.frys.com/product/8119275?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Frys has this 15.6" laptop for $238:
-Celeron® N2830 Dual-Core Processor 2.17GHz
-4gigs ram
-500gigs hd
-usb 3.0

don't know anything about Celerons now-a-days but I'm assuming its better than Atoms and Amd E-1200 chips?

 

[gmaster456]

Modern day Celerons actually aren't bad.

Much to my dismay, during christmas 2010 I came home to find that my parents had bought $299 black friday special laptops.

Toshiba something or other with:

2.1ghz Sempron SI-42
2gb Ram
Radeon HD3000
250gb HDD.
Windows 7 home premium

The batteries have since gone bad on both that they bought but nearly 4 years later they are still working. They are built incredibly cheap and are what I consider disposable laptops but much to my surprise they still work for what they use them for. My mother has since moved on to an iPad but my father still uses his.

If I saw a laptop like that for $199 I'd probably jump on it just to have around.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Won't have to wait that long and might not be even that much. Black friday 2013 had dell 15r's for $177.- at best buy

 

[JEDI]

Won't have to wait that long and might not be even that much. Black friday 2013 had dell 15r's for $177.- at best buy

wha? how did I miss that?
(got an i3 for $270 at staples. altho overkill for what I needed, it was best bang for the buck for BF 2013.)

what cpu in the $177 laptop?

 

[Bateluer]

http://www.frys.com/product/8119275?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Frys has this 15.6" laptop for $238:
-Celeron® N2830 Dual-Core Processor 2.17GHz
-4gigs ram
-500gigs hd
-usb 3.0

don't know anything about Celerons now-a-days but I'm assuming its better than Atoms and Amd E-1200 chips?

A 15.6in screen . . . I would be wary if that's a 720p resolution though. Probably a very low grade screen.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

The N2830 is an Atom.

If you get a low end mobile Celery, make sure it's listed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)#Mobile_processors

 

[JEDI]

The N2830 is an Atom.

If you get a low end mobile Celery, make sure it's listed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_(microarchitecture)#Mobile_processors

what? intel rebadged atoms as Celerons?!

 

[s44]

They started this year.

From the next generation/year forward, *every* Pentium or Celeron will be Atom and not desktop architecture.

Btw, at the $200 price point Windows is crap. Get a Chromebook.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

They started this year.

From the next generation/year forward, *every* Pentium or Celeron will be Atom and not desktop architecture.

To be fair, they improved the Atom architecture quite a bit. A Celeron J1900 (quad core, 2.0 GHz, 2.4GHz Turbo) actually beats a Celeron 1037U (dual core, 1.8GHz) at some things, some of the time!

And it does it with 40% less max power consumption and for only a few bucks more!

(That was sarcasm, btw.)

Btw, at the $200 price point Windows is crap. Get a Chromebook.

I would tend to agree.

 

[VirtualLarry]

To be fair, they improved the Atom architecture quite a bit. A Celeron J1900 (quad core, 2.0 GHz, 2.4GHz Turbo) actually beats a Celeron 1037U (dual core, 1.8GHz) at some things, some of the time!

But not web browsing, which is primarily single-threaded. (Core arch. wins here.)

Anyways, I recall purchasing a $200 BF-special laptop at WM about 4-5 years ago. $200 for a budget laptop is nothing new.

I'm sad I sold it, it had really nice build quality, surprisingly. I think it was an eMachines, with an AMD Sempron 1.8Ghz single-core, with a mobile 780G chipset that supported hardware acceleration for Flash videos (Hulu, etc.) with updated drivers and Flash player. In fact, it really couldn't play full-screen (1366x768) Hulu, without the HW acceleration. Otherwise, it was close to a slide show, video-wise.

 

[bonehead123]

budget is as budget does

 

[JeffMD]

Yea you will find laptops hitting $199 on sale, but it will be bottom of the barrel stuff. No games, bad screens with no view angles, avg to poor battery life. Better off with a tablet at that price vs power range.

 

[billclutterman]

Tablets will be dead in 5 years (hopefully). Tablet PC's running ios, android, or even windows with the atom are a step in the wrong direction. They encourage people to aim low, know very little, push some buttons, see some colors, and if it doesn't do what you want it to do, write a complaint in the review.

I stand up and applaud someone who spends $200 on a real laptop when they could've owned a garbage tablet toy.

 

[s44]

Tablets will be dead in 5 years (hopefully). Tablet PC's running ios, android, or even windows with the atom are a step in the wrong direction. They encourage people to aim low, know very little, push some buttons, see some colors, and if it doesn't do what you want it to do, write a complaint in the review.

This is hilariously backwards. As much as you dislike it, the latter use method is *exactly what most people want*.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

This is hilariously backwards. As much as you dislike it, the latter use method is *exactly what most people want*.

"I want complete control over every aspect of my computing experience, I want to know exactly what is going on at every layer of the system, and anybody who isn't exactly like me shouldn't be using a computer!"

 

[jihe]

If you spend 199 on a second hand business laptop instead, you'll get a much better machine.

 

[JEDI]

Budget laptops at $199 price point by Xmas 2014?

THe answer is yes.

I'm 2/2 in predictions so far this year. (other was $1.99/gal gas)

 

[gmaster456]

I bought the HP Stream 14z. Not quite $199 ($229) but entirely usable as a day to day laptop. Storage is the only limiting thing, but everything else is fine. Not once have a wished I had Chrome OS instead of Windows either.

 

[haggggler]

The Stream 11 is $199

 

[RU482]

buy one every year for $199, sell your old one for $79. Pay $10/mo to have the latest and greatest bottom barrel laptop