Does That Say Great Quality?
I had my two laptops. But just as I set them up for testing, an e-mail arrived from our San Francisco office. Loyd Case, editor of PC Mag’s sister publication, ExtremeTech, had opened his Sunday copy of the San Jose Mercury News to find a Cade Metz, drive out to a Fry’s in Concord, California, to check it out. Well, it was too good to be true. The $299 notebook was nowhere to be found. Seeing a pattern here? But, hidden away at the back of the store, Cade did find a $349 model. It wasn’t a Dell or a Gateway or Sony. It was a GQ. No, not Gentlemen’s Quarterly. This GQ stands for Great Quality. It’s a house brand a brand sold exclusively at Fry’s (see “Anatomy of a House Brand,”). What do you get if you pay $349 for a house-brand notebook from Fry’s? We had to find out. Cade walked over to the nearest sales rep and asked to buy one. “Who’s it for?” the rep asked. “It’s for me,” Cade replied. “You don’t want that,” said the rep. “No AMD processor. No Intel processor. The battery life wil
