El cheapo laptop

I must explain yesterday's outburst of rhyme. Over the weekend I was out shopping with Number One Son for an inexpensive laptop. We sent him off to college this year with a pretty powerful desktop PC, but he discovered it would often be helpful to take a laptop to class and the library, etc.

Dads gotta know how to embarrass teenage sons (it's part of the job description) so step one was to march into Best Buy and say to the clerk "Show me your cheapest laptop." Alas, we didn't find what we were looking for. We thought they carried the eeePC, but they only sell them online. We wanted to Look Before Buying, and their next cheapest laptop was $600. Exit, stage left.

We headed straight to Fry's as we are often wont to do together. (Number One Son is also a geek of some distinction.) Their weekend special was the Toshiba Satellite A205-S5805 for $398:

Yes, it's low end. Maybe even lowest end. Not quite a dog, but not snappy. However, $398 is a pretty good deal for a brand new laptop, especially one that only has to do word processing, surfing, and e-mail. I went home and ordered 2GB of RAM for $30 from frys.com just to stay in practice.

Happiness is a Fry's box on your front porch. Or in the trunk of your car.