Back-to-school is a huge market. Yesterday only Best Buy unveiled four laptop computers for this segment, and today its the turn of Walmart. The newest Walmart machine is an extreme affordable machine for students who're on extremely tight budget. The $298 notebook is basically an HP Compaq Presario CQ60-419WM machine based upon AMD's single core Sempron processor SI-42 (2.1GHz) and features decent set of specification.

For this low price you get a 15.6" widescreen display (1366x768 resolution), 3GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, DVD burner, 802.11b/g Wireless, Ethernet, NVIDIA GeForce 8200M graphics, 3x USB 2.0 ports, 6-cell battery, and Windows Vista Home Basic.

The $298 Compaq laptop will be available in all Walmart stores as well as on its website beginning 26 July.