The results of my shopping

I ended up getting a laptop at Wal-Mart for $378.xx. I was surprised to see that it's actually a decent computer. Needs more memory, but that's in the process of being fixed. My relatives got some too. Mine's going to be used once, for finals, and then re-sold on eBay. It's kind of a shame, because it's really a good computer. I think it's much better than the ones Best Buy and Circuit City were sellling, and I think it's official to say that it is the cheapest brand new laptop ever sold in North America. $378 with no rebates is REAL cheap. But the build quality seems decent, and unlike its competitors it has a longer lasting battery with mobile technology built into the CPU. I'd expect to get 2.5 or so hours out of it. I've heard the others were closer to 1.

The other good news is that I got signed up for a ton of AOL subscriptions at CompUSA. You sign a year agreement for AOL, and get a $250 gift card in return. Normally it would cost $288 bucks for the service, or to cancel, but you can use the $15/month AOL for Broadband service, which brings it to $180 total. So you spend $180 and get $250. Or so I thought. I called yesterday to cancel, and the CSR on the other line told me that there was no cancellation fee. Huh. I might have picked up a free $1500 at CompUSA. I'll keep you posted.