tagryn

It was available online this morning, but they're now sold out.

Well, looking at what is likely to be available for desktops for BF, for those of us in the sub-$400 price range, the $239.99 OM Compaq Presario deal seems to be the best one. Unfortunately its a "early bird" special which I'm believe means it'll only be available in-store & with extremely limited quantities per store. The OD $229.99 Presario has a single-core processor, which is obsolete technology if I'm understanding it right. The Dell $349.00 Inspiron 537s got uninspiring reviews online. If I needed a monitor (I don't) I think the OD $329.99 Presario deal would be tempting, as would the BB $299.97 emachines deal. Right now, I'm trying to decide between this week's OD $329.99 Presario offer and their BF $369.99 HP Pavilion deal. For that $40 difference you get a bigger harddrive and 1 GB more memory, but its unclear if the Pavilion will be available online or if you'll have to slog through the crowds on BF to get it. Again, those two are without monitors. Opinions on this would be welcomed!

If its the same one that Walmart has been selling for their Saturday "early bird" specials, the HP one is labeled as a "gaming" notebook, but I think that's really stretching the definition: it doesn't have the horsepower to run memory-intensive games AFAIK. Probably a computer-dedicated store like Frys or CompUSA (what's left of them) would be more likely to have a higher-end system on sale for BF than a more general store like Walmart or BestBuy.

After reading a couple of reviews of the Acer 5517 from PCMag and elsewhere, the feel I'm getting from those is "yeah, its a solid low-end notebook, but don't expect much more than that." I think for most of us, it should be fine. I'm still waiting to see what the other circulars look like when they get released. The discussion of the CNN Walmart BF story is over in the Walmart forum. The emachine laptop sounds about as low-end as it gets, but the HP for $298 may give the Acer deal a run for its money.