How to Get a Free Xbox 360 When Buying a Laptop on Amazon

Are you a student in the market to buy a new computer?  If so, why not get some free stuff along with it.  Amazon is doing a new deal where if you purchase one of their selected laptops you’ll also receive a free Xbox 360 4GB console.  The promotion is live until September 3, 2011, so you do you some time to decide whether you want in or not.  Sound groovy?  Read on for the details…

How to get the free Xbox with purchase

1. Sign into your Amazon.com student account (it only requires a .edu email address)
2. Purchase one of the eligible laptops, sold by Amazon.com (not a third party)
3. 8 Days later you’ll receive an email notifying you of credit on your account for a free Xbox 360 4GB Console.
4. Now purchase a Xbox 360 4GB and it should show up as $0.00 during checkout.

More details and some buying advice

Amazon has a full list of computers that are eligible for the promotion.  But, not all of them are necessarily on the cheap side; the lowest one is $699.99.  Brands include: Toshiba, Dell, Lenovo, HP, Asus, and Acer.  Also, they have some desktop PC’s available, but none of them are a good price for the hardware you get so let’s stick to the laptops.

Of the PC’s available, a few are last year’s models.  With that said, if you are going for the lower range on the price scale, there are only 3 laptops worth looking at:

• Dell Inspiron 17R i17R-6121DBK ($779)
• ASUS U30SD-XA1 ($799)
• Lenovo IdeaPad U260 08763BU ($799)

Of the 3, the Asus laptop is likely the best offer thanks to its discreet NVIDIA GPU with 1GB of vram;  whereas the other notebooks only include integrated Intel HD onboard graphic processing despite using the same i5 CPU.

Important fine print!

• Amazon Student Members only!
• Must be purchased directly from Amazon.com – not Amazon.uk, .co, .de, or any 3rd party seller listing on Amazon.com.
• You can’t use the credit to upgrade to a better Xbox, it is only good for the 4GB version with no bundles.
• Limited to 1 per shipping address.
• You receive the free Xbox credit 8 days after purchase of the PC.
• Contest ends Sep. 3, 2011

Conclusion

There are some higher end options available in the $1100-$2000 range, but I wouldn’t spend that much just to get in on a free Xbox deal.  For the more expensive computers you are better off waiting for a real sale.  On the low end however, it is worth it.  Honestly, at $800 for a powerhouse laptop it is not a bad deal, especially when you throw in a free Xbox (that you can later sell on craigslist/ebay if you want).