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Best Buy dumps junk PCs on Thanksgiving shoppers
First Wal-Mart cut PC prices well ahead of the annual post-Thanksgiving discount wars. Now comes Best Buy, one of the first to have its Black Friday ad leaked online.

Admittedly, The Browser is tempted by the price cuts, available from 5 a.m. to noon on the day after Thanksgiving. We've already put the $399 Toshiba DLP projector on the holiday wish list. But there are a few Best Buy deals we're stearing clear of, like the $180 E-Machines desktop PC. The machine normally sells for $500. which makes the offer sounds like a steal, but there's a reason Best Buy is eager to unload this model at dirt-cheap prices. The processor's an antique, and the machine will struggle to run the most bare-bones version of the upcoming Windows Vista. Our recommendation: This is a PC that no sane consumer not in the grips of Black Friday doorbuster fever would touch in a million years. You'd be better off spending your holiday dollars to upgrade the computer you've already got.
Posted by Owen Thomas 9:04 AM 9 Comments comment | Add a Comment

You call a processor that was first released on May 28th of this year "an antique"? Granted it's a Celeron but this Celeron D 352 runs at 3.2GHz and has support for 64-bit instructions. Best Buy had a similar deal last year and I still regret not waking up at 3AM to take advantage of it.
Posted By George, Hartford, CT : 11:00 PM  

A leak? I don't think so, just way to create buzz. The problem with best buy.. how many mail in rebates do you have to send in to get $399?
Posted By Jim, Ceder Rapids, IA : 11:29 AM  

Those rebates are instant buddy. BB doesn't deal with anymore mail in rebates with their main products sold in stores.
Posted By Daniel, Colma< CA : 4:45 PM  

Please tell us of the $180 upgrade that the "sane consumer" should purchase instead of this system. Don't be a PC snob.
Posted By Roger, Delhi, LA : 5:00 PM  

Glad to oblige! The $60, 250-GB internal hard drive is money well spent - I'm about to upgrade the drive in my laptop. The 17" flat-screen monitor for $80 also looks like a good deal, if you don't already have one that large. With the remaining money, buy some additional memory for your existing PC, and you'll probably end up with a better machine than the one being sold.
Posted By Owen Thomas, San Francisco, CA : 5:21 PM  

Do you think we all buy a PC every year? I know people running Windows 98 and ME! If you want a PC and have $180, buy the E-Machine on Black Friday! If you have to buy another in 18 months that is only $10 per month.
Posted By Roger, Delhi, LA : 5:56 PM  

don't buy a $180 machine because it won't run vista? please. xp will still be supported for at least a few more years. and by the time it isn't you'd need to buy a new machine anyway.

it's also the perfect price if you want a second machine for experimenting with linux (without the headaches of installing and maintaining a dual-os system),
Posted By tiffany, atlanta, ga : 1:52 PM  

Why I need to run Vista on it, even XP is bloated? Get the latest Linux distro and enjoy the freedom
Posted By testing, washington, dc : 2:17 PM  

A celery chip running at 5000000GHZ is still a celery chip...

Might as well buy a TI89 graphing calculator and a big monitor...

Do you think they sell these to be nice to inner-city youths? It's because they know these machines are so crap that in 2 months, they'll be paying a company to haul them off in trashbins...
Posted By Will, Chardon, Ohio : 12:19 PM  

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