This Compaq laptop seems really inexpensive. Am I missing something?

[Punked Out Comp]

Here


Compaq Presario 15.4" Widescreen Notebook PC (C306US)

CPQ C306US
• Intel® Celeron® M 430
• Built-in 802.11 wireless
• 512MB of DDR2 memory

• Burns CDs and DVDs
• 80GB hard drive
• Altec Lansing speakers




Price was:
$729.99

You save:
-$100.00

You pay:
$629.99

Mail-in rebate(s):
-$130.00


Price after
rebate:
$499.99



Even without the savings and rebates, its pretty cheap, but I find that often when there is a deal on things like this, they never sell it at the "original" price, they just put it in there to make it look good. So this thing is either worth $500, or is worth $730 with an awesome sale. Either way it seems too good to be true. Is there an obvious reason for it's low price that I'm missing?

[Panama Red]

Time to unload the aging technology. Hence the M processor, Celeron is lighter duty yet. And Compaq is one of the least reliable systems out there. (imo)

[Alaron]

Agree with PR. That machine isn't any more a deal then all the other $500 Celry M laptops that the big stores put in the Sunday ads. I would save up a couple hundred more and look for coupons on a Dell with a Core chip and more RAM.

[Punked Out Comp]

So, is the M bad, or just not so up to date? If its a decent CPU, 512 RAM isn't so little to me, and the only bad thing would be reliability? Whats so unreliable about it?

[Floppyman]

I think I'd rather get a Dell for that pice before I'd take a Compaq.

[mojo]

The "M" itself isn't bad, it just stands for mobile, but I wouldn't touch a celeron with a 10 foot pole. If it was a Pentium M, it would have been the best class of mobile processors you could get, a year ago, but these days I'd get a core duo, which is basically a dual-core pentium M, or a newer mobile core 2 duo, the mobile version of the new crazy-fast intel processors. If you do see a great deal on a core duo, jump on it, as the core 2 was basically a tweaked version of the pentium M, and the pentium M was so good to start with that the new chip isn't much faster. Confused yet? Sorry, Intel marketing is really confusing, here:

Celeron anything = bad

Pentium M = good, but getting old

Core Duo = dual core Pentium M

Core 2 Duo desktop chips = intel's new really fast desktop chips, based largely on the Pentium M architechture (dual core)

Core 2 mobile chips = mobile core 2 duos, faster than Core Duo, but not by much, ~10% in most cases, clock for clock

And one more fun fact, the "Core 2 Duo" chip is based on intel's new "Core" microarchitecture, but the "Core Duo" chip is not. Intel product names give me a headache.

[thefultonhow]

The Celeron M 4xx series is actually based off the new Core/Core 2 Duo lineup, but is still single core. Performance may be roughly equivalent to a Pentium-M, but without any power management features.

However, I would never ever recommend a Compaq to anyone. What differentiates manufacturers in this day and age is service and support, and HP, Compaq and Sony have the worst of the bunch. They are also notoriously unreliable compared to Dell, IBM, Acer and Apple.

If I were you I'd wait until Dell has a good deal (check http://www.xpbargains.com/dell_coupons/) and then get a basic model with a great warranty (CompleteCare is a must IMO).

[Kareeser]

Celerons ain't so bad I used to be on that bandwagon until I actually got down and tried a bunch of them out. Straight out of the box, they were great. Now we hit the 3 month mark, and they're still going strong. They're not garbage, they're just low cost for low performance

[glc]

Will you guys quit Celeron bashing? They are just fine for a budget machine. My laptop is a P3-700 and *any* modern Celeron 1 GHz or faster will totally blow it away. The P3-700 does what I need in a laptop just fine! With 512mb ram and Win2K it's quite peppy. I don't use it as a desktop replacement - it's for road use only with basic apps - Office 97 and M$ Streets & Trips. I even run a GPS with it. I sat in a bar in an airport for 5 hours waiting for a delayed flight hooked up to their wifi and got a LOT of work done. If you are looking for a desktop replacement grade laptop, *NO* $500 laptop is going to perform well enough, I don't care WHO makes it.

I kinda had to laugh at the guy I was sharing a table with in the bar - here I am with my dinosaur with an old Linksys wireless B-only card using Win2K and the Linksys connection software and it hooked right up - this guy was sitting there with a brand spanking new Dell Latitude company provided laptop with XP SP2 and the internal Intel A/B/G wireless - he couldn't get hooked up to the wifi no matter what he (or I) did - it associated fine but refused to grab an IP address..........he then looked at my old Thinkpad and told me that he had just turned in a Thinkpad and he wished he had it back.

I do agree that a Compaq Presario laptop is garbage though - not because of the Celeron but because of other shoddy components.