Seven-Fifty Specials

Faithful readers are familiar with Grand Openings, HardwareCentral's occasional tour of PC vendors' Web sites to find how much desktop or laptop $1,000 will buy.

As survey time rolls around again, however, we face a problem we never imagined when launching the feature in the fall of 2001 -- it's too easy to find a decent desktop for 10 C-notes these days, while notebooks at that price are a little less full-featured but basically not half bad. The challenge and fun of picking a configuration -- having to choose between a faster processor and bigger hard disk, for example -- has plunged along with PC prices.

Our first thought was to cut our imaginary budget in half. But as much fun as we had writing the headline (Grand Openings Extreme!), we found ourselves balking at bottom-feeders: Yes, you can find a $500 PC at any big-box retailer, but not one you could honestly recommend to a friend as even a little bit future-proof. Sure, some homes have room for a third or fourth computer just for e-mail or Web surfing, but when friends and family seek your approval of a $399 purchase from a Sunday sale flyer, we bet you find yourself saying, "Well, if you could go just a little higher ... "

So welcome to Seven-Fifty Specials, in which we split the difference and see what three-quarters of a grand can get you -- hunting for 1GB rather than 512MB of RAM, smiling on systems that supplement a humble integrated-graphics chipset with a PCI Express x16 slot for more game-worthy upgrades. As in prior shopping sprees, any errors in transcription are our fault; any price or configuration changes since yesterday and today are vendors'.

Hanging Around the Warehouse

Does membership have its privileges? For Costco members, the discount chain's online inventory includes an HP Pavilion a1737c-b minitower plus 19-inch widescreen (1,440 by 900) LCD monitor bundle for $750. The Windows Vista Home Premium PC packs Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (2.1GHz) power, 1GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive, a DVD burner, and Nvidia GeForce 6150 LE graphics that combine the usual system-memory sharing with a dedicated display buffer of 128MB (and, yes, a PCIe x16 slot).

Wal-Mart.com shoppers will find an HP Compaq SR5023-WM bundled with a 19-inch flat panel for the even lower price of $698, but must settle for a single-core Athlon 64 3800+ processor and slightly smaller 250GB hard disk. For desk-space-savers, however, Wal-Mart offers an AcerPower 2000 small-form-factor PC -- 9.8 by 2.4 by 7.9 inches with a Core 2 Duo E4300 CPU -- for the same amount.

When more PC-savvy individuals think of small-form-factor systems, they're likely to think of LAN-party specialist Shuttle. But they may not know that Shuttle is a player in the $749 space: A ready-to-ship G2 3000b configuration includes Intel's dual-core Pentium D 925 (3.0GHz), 512MB of DDR-2, and 160GB hard and DVD±RW drives. Shuttle's even tinier (11.7 by 8.3 by 2.2 inches) X200B is $733 with a Celeron M 420, 160GB hard disk, DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive, and Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 950 video. (The phrase GMA 950 becomes quite familiar when browsing $750 systems.)

Among perhaps better-known brands, neither notebook vendor Fujitsu nor notebook and desktop seller Sony could meet our budget; their most affordable dual-core portables are $1,049 and $900, respectively.

Wal-Mart.com and Costco, however, court laptop shoppers with 6.5-pound, 15.4-inch widescreen models for $748 and $750, respectively: Wal-Mart's online-only special is an HP Comapq Presario 6310US with an AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-50 (1.6GHz) inside, while Costco's is a refurbished HP dv5163cl Core Duo T2300 (1.66GHz) model. Each has a DVD±RW drive; Wal-Mart wins the hard-disk honors by 100GB to 80GB.

Hitting the Road

We smiled to see Micro Center's PowerSpec desktop brand put the headline "PowerSpec recommends Windows Vista Ultimate" next to a $300 Celeron D model that'd have its hands full running Win 98. At $730, however, Micro Center offers no fewer than three desktops -- a Lenovo 3000 J110 with Pentium D 925 processor and Windows Vista Business; a Lenovo ThinkCentre A60 with Athlon 64 X2 4200+ power and Windows XP Professional; and an HP Pavilion a6044x with a Core 2 Duo E4400 and Vista Home Premium. DVD burners and 1GB of memory are standard across the board, though it takes both Lenovos' 160GB hard disks to equal the HP's 320GB drive.

Micro Center's laptop house brand, WinBook, is on hiatus, but the retailer stocks a $750 Toshiba Satellite A135-S4427 notebook with a Core Duo T2250 (1.73GHz) processor; 1GB of DDR-2/533 memory; a 120GB hard disk and double-layer DVD±RW drive; and a 15.4-inch widescreen (1,280 by 800) display. If the 6-pound Satellite is a bit too heavy for you, a 5.3-pound Aspire 5570-2609 with a 14.1-inch widescreen, Core Duo T2060 CPU, and 80GB hard drive is also $750.

Toshiba's own site declares, "The Tecra A8 sets the new standard for quality and reliability for a notebook PC," but it doesn't set a standard for value -- a $749 configuration of the 15.4-inch business laptop gets by with Intel's Celeron M 430 processor, 512MB of memory, a 60GB hard disk, and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive.

Another 15.4-inch-screened Toshiba, the Satellite A200, is only $719.20 after an instant rebate with a Pentium T2080 (1.73GHz) dual-core CPU, 80GB hard drive, and DVD burner; we wish it came with more than 512MB of RAM, but would spend the $25 surplus to add WiFi networking.

Wandering over to Best Buy, we found a pair of $750 price tags, 1.6GHz dual-core processors, and 15.4-inch (1,280 by 800) displays on a pair of Vista Home Premium portables. The 6.6-pound HP Compaq Presario V6305NR relies on AMD's Turion 64 X2 TL-50 and Nvidia's GeForce Go 6150 integrated graphics. A few ounces lighter despite 20GB more hard disk storage (120GB), the Gateway MT6705 uses Intel's dual-core mobile Pentium T2060 and GMA 950 graphics. Neither makes a bargain hunter suffer with less than 1GB of memory or lack of onboard DVD±RW.