I see that Dell is also featuring a Vostro A860 laptop for $379. Does anyone know anything about this unit? Is this a good deal at this price? Last year I bought a Vostro 1000 for $399 but it seemed to have more features included. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

I see that Dell is also featuring a Vostro A860 laptop for $379. Does anyone know anything about this unit? Is this a good deal at this price? Last year I bought a Vostro 1000 for $399 but it seemed to have more features included. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Well, 1 gig of memory and Vista are not a good combination. I bought a dell laptop with Vista and 1 gig memory last year (not a vostro) and was very disappointed with it until I bumped the memory up to 2 gigs. The celeron processor will make matters worse. While Vista home will technically run at 1 gig, in reality, you want 2 gigs for vista home and 4 gigs for Vista Premium.

I just got an offer in the mail for the Vostro A860 for $299.00. Offer E-value code 66745-BQPDZ4D. It is valid 11/24/08-12/3/08 while supplies last.

I got the Vostro last year thanks to this site. and a 32" LCD for $432 after tax 2 years ago. Not sure what I'll get this year.

Here's an e-value code for the Vostro A860 for $299!
E-Value Code: 66745-BQPDZ4D

Hope someone snags a couple of these! Valid until 12/3/2008. Also should be good for a $200 upgrade to the Vostro 1510 with the Intel Core 2 Duo bringing that to $499 which is less than posted here as well.

Happy Black Friday

The Best Buy HP laptop is a good deal, but this deal from Dell is just as good (Vostro A860) $299. It has some trade offs....less RAM (1GB), Celeron processor instead of Dual Core Processor, and a slightly less advanced video card. But it also beats the HP on sleakness and overall look, screen size 15.6, and it includes a 1 year in home warranty from DELL.

It really just comes down to what you want to use it for. For a home computer....I only use it to surf the web, listen to music and watch DVD's, and use Micosoft Office every once in a while. Sor for me, the DELL is actually a better choice due to screen size, in home service plan (Shipping a laptop all over the US for service is not fun), and the fact that I am too old to spend all night out in the cold. Now if you are a gamer/video editor it is a no brainer, you need the extra RAM and faster processor/video card. But, if you are using the laptop for these purposes I don't know if the HP is the way to go either (I would want atleast 4GB RAM and an upgraded video card).

One last thing about Vista running on 1GB RAM. IT WILL BE JUST FINE! Vista will keep most of your RAM in use whether you have 1GB or 4GBs. That's just the way it is set-up to run. Basically, it takes control of the RAM and allocates as needed. So in turn the computer will show that it is using the full 1GB, but really most of that is simply being allocated by VISTA.

People keep talking about RAM like it is the solution to every computer slowdown in the world. 1GB, 2GB, and now 4GB. Just because it is cheap doesn't mean it is the right thing to do. My Vista install barely ever shows greater than 1GB memory usage. For surfing the web and e-mail there is no reason anyone would need more than 1GB. If you use Photoshop and are constantly encode/transcode media + DLNA server etc., then you might need 2 or 4GB depending.


Hope this helps anyone on the fence about which BF laptop to buy

I tried using the E-value code that has been suggested and it says it is expired.