DaleRider

You are correct.....the Student Package is NOT Office 2003; no Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc. It has instead a collection of products designed to help a student study, be more productive, do homework via their Office program and this associated program....apparently has Encarta, but also has graphing/scientific calculator software, templates to use with Office, something called homework starters, web search helpers, etc.

Yeah....riiiiiiiiiiight......selling them at or below cost when they'd bring almost any price put on them. Sure, now THAT'S sound business!!! Believe it when I see it............ :rolleyes:

And you do know Wal-Mart is the largest single importer of Chinese goods into the U.S., right? WM is responsible for 10% of all Chinese-made goods imported into the U.S., which is a rather staggering amount considering this is just one retailer with that large an amount of importation from China. It's also been estimated that upwards of 80% of all goods sold in Wal-Mart are Chinese in origin. Coffee makers, dog food, paper towels, etc. are what I consider safe Wal-Mart items. Large dollar electronic items from Wal-Mart are like those on HomeShoppingNetwork.....won't buy them there.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but HP's computers end in MANY letters other than wm. Some do, many do not, as the current generations of HP's end in "N" and "W" from Wal-Mart. The lady provided the original box, which I didn't need to take from her home, the original receipt, which I held onto while I had her computer in case it was a hardware failure (it turns out her son was downloading risque material and had infected it badly with worms and viruses that McAfee failed to catch...miserably.) No each and every Wal-Mart desktop from HP/Compaq ends in "WM", that's jsut a fallacy and incorrect. You should investigate before making such blanket statements......current lines available from WM: A1250N A1219N a1265w These are in-store models, not confined to on-line ordering.

OK....then how about this from HP's own website? I worked a few weeks ago on a lady's computer she'd bought from Wal-Mart. It was an HP 6735KR. Looked up the computer on HP's website to look at what the original specs were and if the computer had been altered before I got it. (It'd been worked on before by a "friend" of hers so I wanted to make sure nothing was amiss from that.....and he didn't really fix it!) I found something interesting......two models of the same computer. So I called HP tech support and asked........the HP 6735KR was a Wal-Mart specific computer and the HP 6735MX/CN were their online and BestBuy/Circuit City/Staples/etc. model. Interestingly, the motherboards were DRASTICALLY different. The BB/CC/Staples/online/etc. model had an Asus brand motherboard....and Asus is considered by some the Cadillac of motherboard manufacturers. Hers, on the other hand, had a TriGem motherboard, a rather cheap Chinese-made 'board that's only sold to OEMs and cannot be purchased retail. A link to the Asus motherboard model HP computers.....hers is not listed here, but is kinda by number.....6735, just the MX and CN versions....not the KR. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?dlc=en&lc=en&product=58739&lang=en&cc=us&docname=bph07170 Here's a link to her computer's motherboard.......and it lists her model, the 6735KR model (left column, half way down....) http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?dlc=en&lc=en&product=58739&lang=en&cc=us&docname=bph07169 Now, both models ran Intel Celeron chips and had essentially the same chipsets, but who'd you want building it? To put it in other terms, do you want Toyota or Honda building your car or do you want Kia or Fiat? To top it off, her hard drive was an offbrand Chinese hard drive, not a Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung, Fugitsu, Toshiba, or any other known and retail brand. The memory wasn't even brand marked.....just had speed markings on the chip and an HP sticker saying "Remove and void warranty." Now, I'm not saying every single HP Wal-Mart computer is made with cheaper components than the BB/CC similar models, but when Wal-Mart demands a price point be met, the manufacturer will do most anything to meet it....otherwise WM will go elsewhere to get that price. If you've ever noticed, almost every electronic item in WM is almost the same part number as BB and CC, but is usually a letter or number off.....for a reason. Personally, I buy dog food in Wal-Mart, but never electronics. Seen too much junk come out of there to trust them.

Methinks the BB Toshiba buyers were robbed!!! The CC Toshiba has a separate 1 year warranty booklet, 15 pages English, 17 pages Spanish. There are also the Resource Guide/Owner's Manual, an Instruction Manual for Safety and Comfort, and a flotilla of papers for this 'n' that. Did the BB Toshiba have Microsoft OneNote included or a trial version of Microsoft Office Teacher and Student 2003? Just curious.....we almost made the decision to buy the BB Tosh and changed our minds on the way to BB/CC.....now glad we did.

C'est la vie........guess no one here went out to Fry's in ATL this year.

Ours works quite nicely so far....already upgraded the RAM to 1GB, which helped it out nicely. The dual channel function is a plus. The screen is excellent...no complaints at all......using a wireless mouse with it instead of the touchpad. New battery in a week or two (Toshiba is giving 10% off accessories through December, so going to take advantage of that before it disappears.) Only other thing we see it needs at all.

Just wondering how it was handled..........tickets/vouchers for hot items or just a free-for-all when the doors opened? And, forughly, how many people were outside when the doors opened? Thanks in advance..........and just trying to decide if Fry's is on our list for next year. It'd be an hour longer drive for us, but after Best Buy's shenanigans this year, we're open to alternatives.

We got to our respective stores (me CC, Deb BB) at 9:30....I was 11th in line, she was 27th. Guess next year is earlier by a bit......and I thought 9:30 was overdoing it as being too early.

You are correct........he'll have 1.5GB of RAM but not function as a dual-channel set of RAM. As the manual excerpt you posted pointed out, dual channel function, whether in a desktop or laptop, depends upon having the same speed rating and memory size in each strip of RAM. Ideally, you'd have a matched pair of sticks of RAM for dual channel, but I've seen strips from two different manufacturers work together as long as their rated speed, CAS, and size were identical. Then again, a lot depends on the motherboard's chipset and manufacturer as compatibility of dissimilar RAM goes......some motherboard manufacturers tend to "fudge" the specs of the chipset they're working with in an attempt to give more overclocking options, but then compatibility problems begin to crop up. DFI is one m'board brand that comes to mind currently. There is more than one peripheral that is having compatibility problems with their MB's and no others.....such as Silverstone power supplies, some brands of RAM, etc. Usually when good quality components begin to have problems with specific mb brands, it's usually the motherboard maker trying to boost the chipset or "fudge" on the specs in an attempt to give more overclocking speed. Abit had that problem several years ago but has become more "compliant" with specs now. LOL!! My, I do tend to ramble...........

I'm glad you got what you wanted in that notebook. I looked at that one, too, before deciding on the CC Toshiba. Why? A few reasons: The 15" screen was a small factor. The slightly larger, but noticeably faster hard drive was a bigger factor. (The Compaq has a 4200rpm spin rate vs. the Toshiba's 5400rpm spin rate....and will make loading and accessing programs a tad faster on the Tosh.) The built-in wireless in the Tosh was a plus.....don't have to sacrifice either the card slot or a USB port for wireless. Already came with a stick of 512MB RAM....and adding a similar stick will give dual-channel function, something the Compaq cannot do. And the batteries are actually quite comparable.....even though one is a 4 cell and one is a 6 cell, run time will probably be close to even. Notice that both Toshiba and Compaq offer an upgraded battery for the laptops.....the Toshiba is an 8 cell and the Compaq is a 12 cell. I'd honestly suppose both are going to achieve 1 1/2 hours or so on the stock battery and approx. 3 hours on the larger battery either offers. Glad you're happy with it!!! Sounds like you did well!! BTW........what was your sales tax rate on that $730? In GA, it'd have run around $51.10 for tax, which would be just over $37 higher sales tax than the tax on the $200 Toshiba.

We're more than pleased with our CC Toshiba laptop.....upgraded the RAM to 1GB already ($40), now running in dual-channel mode. The ATI graphics is taking 128MB out of the system RAM, but this still leaves 872MB RAM for Windows...more than enough for us. We checked ut the Sempron vs. Celeron processor lappys and really couldn't tell the difference between both running the software we're going to be using the laptop for....Excel spreadsheets, Word, internet, etc. Even watching DVDs on both variants of machines was essentially the same.....so saw no problem with having a Celeron processor in the laptop. (All 3 of my home ocmputers are Athlon 64 processor machines, so I do have a "bent" towards AMD right now...) As a side benefit, when we signed up with the AOHell plan (for teh $150 discount), we were initially signed up in the $23.90 dial-up plan. Called the CC we purchased the laptop from, talked with the manager and he told me all I had to do was call the 1-800 number at AOL and change the plan. Seemed simple enough.....and was even better. When I was on the phone with the CS rep, I mentioned I had really wanted the broadplan they advertise....the "Bring Your Own Broadband Plan," and she said "No problem!" and changed us over to it....for $10/mo. So our total cost for the laptop, $231 after tax in the store, plus $120 in AOL fees, comes to $351....a nice price.

Actually, while Hynix is most known for producing chips for manufacturers of RAM, in the CC Toshiba laptops, at least the one I've got, has a Hynix-branded 512MB strip of PC4200 DDR2 RAM in it. Indeed, the chips are Hynix, but the STICKER from the MANUFACTURER is HYNIX with Hynix part numbers and such on it..... Below is the whole lot of numbers on the Hynix STICKER on my Hynix RAM: (Two rows, just as listed) 512MB 2Rx16 PC2-4200S-444-12 HYMP564S64P6-C4 AA 0534N Hynix does indeed produce the entire PCB and chips on occasions when tasked by some manufacturers. Others, like Kingston, PNY, and the like, take Hynix chips and put them on their own PCB. In this case, we have Hynix branded chipset RAM.....stickered and all. I think to run dual channel, the size and speed of the RAM is what you need to match......a 512MB strip of PC4200 DDR2. Of course, you probably need to ascertain if the Hynix strip can run dual channel......most RAM doesn't have a problem, but some strips have been known to balk at doing so. Doing some further research and I found this strip of Hynix RAM is routinely sold overseas, like in Australia and New Zealand...found several on-line stores in OZ and NZ selling this exact strip of RAM....... http://www.trademe.co.nz/Computers/Laptops/Memory/auction-40760928.htm http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?item=MEMHYN4512 These links are to two stores in New Zealand that sell this strip. I have found some ebay auctions where the sellers of this RAM say they've removed the strip(s) from Dells, Toshibas, etc. The specs on the RAM are quite the same as a strip of Corsair ValueRam sold by Newegg.......... CAS 4, timings of 4-4-4. I have found out the Hynix is dual channel capable and should coexist well with the Corsair. This Hynix strip and the above-mentioned Corsair strip are both on the ATI approved list of compatible RAM for their X200 video card, so that's another question answered.......the link to ATI's compatibility list is below: http://www.ati.com/products/radeonxpress200mIntel/memvendor.html#d Hope this info helps the new Toshiba owners in deciding how to upgrade their RAM....I just ordered a strip of the Corsair 512MB DDR2 to go into my Toshiba. I ignored the Kingston because I have just had too many Kingston products lately die on me.

We arrived at 9:30PM......I was #9 inline at CC, Deb was 28th in line at BB. I got the laptop, she refused the extortion software "upgrade" for the eMachine desktop. We did get 2 of the MP3 players.....we left disgusted at BB today.