Office Depot's $100 PC

Retail chain Office Depot advertised a $99.99 PC package last weekend as a warm-up for this year’s Thanksgiving Day sales. Not surprisingly, the PC wasn’t quite a powerhouse, but it was a complete system including a monitor and printer.

The HP minitower used a Celeron D 352 (3.2 GHz) processor, 256 MB memory, an 80 GB hard drive a CD burner and an "F380" all-in-one printer. There are some strings attached - cuh as the the common mail-in-rebates, which total $330. A reader also informed us that Office Depot asks for a "minimum" $99 shipping charge.

Office Depot also banks on the fact that customers will upgrade their computer with a larger 160 GB hard drive (plus $40), 512 Mb memory (plus $50), a 15" LCD (plus $140) and a better printer (plus $20), which increase the system price to $460 or an in-store price of $790. At least for customers who are diligently sending in their rebate coupons, even the fully equipped system appears to be a good value in today’s market.

A store manager of a Chicago-are Office Depot told TG Daily that there has been strong demand for the systems, but some locations told us that there are still systems available.