Moore’s Law Strikes Again

Calendar November 9, 2006 | Posted by Aubrey Turner

I see that Wal-Mart has a Compaq laptop (V5305WM) on sale for $398 in their stores. The specs on that laptop don’t seem too bad, and no rebates are required so you don’t have to gather receipts, send them off, get rejected, then curse them for ripping you off. smirk

It sometimes amazes me just how far down prices go when the technology is well behind the bleeding edge. For comparison purposes, I bought an eMachines M6805 about 3.5 years ago and it cost $1549.99. This Compaq is comparable in features (better in some areas) and slightly lighter and slimmer.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison:

Feature M6805 V5305WM
Processor Mobile AMD Athlonâ„¢ 64 3000+ Processor 2.00 GHz Mobile AMD Sempronâ„¢ Processor 3300+
Memory 512MB DDR SODIMM (PC 2700) 512MB 333MHz DDR
Graphics ATI Mobility RADEONâ„¢ 9600 ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M IGP
Graphics Memory 64MB 128MB DDR (shared)
Hard Drive 60GB HDD (4200RPM) 60GB 5400RPM
Optical Drive CDRW/DVD Combo Drive (24 × 24×24 CD-RW; 8x max. DVD-ROM) 24X DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive
Display 15.4″ Widescreen TFT LCD WXGA (1280 × 800 max. resolution) 15.4” WXGA High-Definition BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800) Display
Fax/Modem 56K 56K
Network 10/100MBps built-in Ethernet Integrated 10/100BASE-T Ethernet
Wireless 802.11g Built-in Wireless (up to 54Mbps) 54gâ„¢ 802.11b/g WLAN with 125HSM / SpeedBooster support
Media 6-in-1 Digital Media Manger (Compact Flash, Micro Drive, MultiMedia Card, Secure Digital™ (SD), Memory Stick®, Memory Stick Pro®) N/A
Ports
  • 4 USB 2.0 ports
  • 1 IEEE 1394
  • 1 VGA External Connector
  • 1 S-Video Out
  • Microphone In
  • Headphone/Audio Out
  • 1 PCMCIA Slot (Card Bus type I or type II)
  • 1 ExpressCard/54 Slot (also supports ExpressCard/34)
  • 2 Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0
  • 1 headphone-out
  • 1 microphone-in
  • 1 VGA (15-pin)
  • 1 TV-Out (S-video)
  • 1 RJ-11 (modem)
  • 1 RJ -45 (LAN)
  • 1 notebook expansion port 2
  • 1 Consumer IR
Dimensions 1.6″H x 14.0″W x 10.4″D 10.2″(L) x 14.1″(W) x 1.38″(min H) /1.77″(max H)
Weight 7.5lbs. (8.65 total travel weight) 6.4 lbs

Category Categories: Technology

1 Comment

  1. Jay says:
    November 9, 2006 at 12:40 pm

    I noticed that too, in the recent flier!  I was astonished, and had I the cash might have been tempted despite it being a Compaq.  The only caveat I could see offhand was quantities were limited.