Les Jones: $599 Thinkpads Through September 7

August 18, 2005

Tech > $599 Thinkpads Through September 7

$599 Thinkpads direct from IBM. Celeron processors, WiFi, 40 MB GB HD, and 512 MB RAM. The only slightly cheap thing is that it has a plain CD instead of a CD-RW/DVD. Can't complain too much for that price. Via Phil Greenspun.

I'm a firm believer in cheap laptops. It's too easy to lose a laptop to theft or gravity to invest in an expensive model. Our Compaq laptops were $1100 before rebates, and supposedly $650 afterwards, though one of the rebates didn't come through, so they wound up being $725 each. Almost two years later they're still going strong.

Posted by lesjones

Comments

Dell has some decent specials right now, too:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050815-5209.html

The 700m for ca $725 is a semi-decent deal. My wife got one a couple months ago -- the screen is amazingly awesome, the sharpest I've personally ever seen on a laptop.

Posted by: Steve K. at August 17, 2005

40 MB HD

40 megabyte harddrive, wow that is somthing special I only have a 20 megabyte harddrive

Posted by: cube at August 18, 2005

Heh. You laugh. When I bought my first computer (a Macintosh LC with a 12" monitor) I sold my two year old Pugeot mountain bike so I could afford to upgrade from the standard model (2 MB RAM and a 20 MB hard drive) to the ultra deluxe model with 4 MB RAM and a whopping 40 MB hard drive.

Later, when I worked in a computer store in the early '90s the rule of thumb for RAM prices was something like $5 for every megabyte and that was considered a bargain. Now it's closer to 15 cents a megabyte.

Posted by: Les Jones at August 18, 2005