Would You Buy a $398 Laptop?

When Black Friday rolls around there are store advertising laptops for under $400 with the note that there will be one, two or a few at that price. I’ve tried getting in the thick of that morning madness only to find that they have sold out of the sale price laptops.

Today I was looking at the Wal Mart website and came across the Everex gBook for $398 dollars. There was a new laptop for a third of what popular models are selling for. The specifications show it has a 15.4 inch screen, 512 mb of Ram, 60gb hard drive, CD-RW/DVD ROM, 1.5 GHz processor, ethernet, 802.11b/g wifi (wireless), Open Office and gOS v2 operating system. OK, that why it’s cheaper the GOS Linux insted of Windows. They are not having pay for a Window license.

I had wrote last year that Wal Mart had been selling an Everex desktop for under $300 that ran GOS Linux. They had sold out a couple times. The gOS isn’t that bad at all, I had downloaded it to run on an older machine and the interface is clean, simple, speedy and direct. I can’t say that for Windows Vista.

This laptop may not sell out as fast as it’s desktop brother, but there are strong indicators that it may. If someone was looking for a laptop and didn’t have a lot of cash to toss into it, this one should be on your short list. The gOS has packaged a  Microsoft Office compatible software suite that would make it possible to do office work on without problems. The big question are people willing to pay $200-$400 more for a system with the same hardware because they love Windows or would take the savings. The Everex gBook is a target purchase for the economic stimulus checks that will be coming out soon.