We were juiced up on a sugar high on Halloween and missed this tidbit about HP showing up in Wal-Mart with a $398 laptop and desktop just in time for the holiday shopping rush. Our bad, sorry. Anyway, the info comes from Web site Black Friday 2006, which posted scans of future Wal-Mart newspaper inserts. Specs listed for the notebook include an AMD 2800+ Sempron processor, 256MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, a CD-RW/DVD combo drive and a 15-inch display, and we’re pretty sure it comes with a kickstart and pedals so you can get it up and running. (Just kidding. There’s no kickstart.) The desktop gets a 3000+ Sempron, 512MB of memory, a 40GB drive and a 15-inch LCD. Plus, both are running Windows, which is nice to see, but we wouldn’t have expected HP to throw Lindows on its systems.
With these specs, don’t expect to do more than just one thing at a time, and do it pretty slowly at that. But hey, if you’re working on a computer from 2000, these things will feel like screamers. Besides a few years ago you couldn’t get a 15-inch LCD for $300, let alone a full laptop for $400.
Will Wal-Mart sell $398 notebooks, desktops? [cnet news.com]