Microsoft rings in 12 days of holiday deals with $79 Toshiba tablet
The first deal of Microsoft's 12 days trims the price of a Windows 8.1 tablet by $20 and throws in a free one-year subscription to Microsoft Office 365 Personal.
Microsoft is kicking off its annual holiday 12 Days of Deals with a tablet that sounds like a good deal when you throw in the extra goodies.
As of 5 a.m. PT, Monday's deal is a Toshiba Encore Mini Windows 8.1 tablet . Retailing for $119, the tablet normally sells for $99 but is up for grabs for $79 for the day. The tablet is equipped with a 7-inch HD 768x 1,280 touchscreen, a quad-core Intel Atom Z3735G processor, 1GB of memory and 16GB worth of internal storage.
An annual tradition, Microsoft's 12 Days of Deals provides holiday shoppers with a bit more incentive to buy products that may not otherwise catch their eye or their cash. And the software giant sometimes throws in a little bit extra to sweeten the deal. In this case, the Toshiba tablet is worth considering at $79 based on the options offered.
First, Microsoft adds in a free one-year subscription to Office 365 Personal, a feature that normally comes with the tablet. So you get the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, along with 1 terabyte of OneDrive online storage. A one-year subscription to Office 365 Personal alone would cost you $70 a year. Second, Microsoft includes a 16GB MicroSD card valued at $20.
And there's even more incentive. The tablet is part of Microsoft's Signature edition series. That means the tablet comes factory-clean with no bloatware, junkware, trialware or other third-party software that could slow it down. Bloatware has been a plague on PCs and tablets for years, so Microsoft's Signature service saves you the time and effort of having to uninstall all that stuff to make your device more user-friendly.
Beyond the core features, the Toshiba tablet comes with Intel HD Graphics, a Micro-USB port, a battery that promises around 7 hours on a single charge, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and cameras in the front and rear.
Microsoft is already offering a peek at Tuesday's daily deal -- an unlocked Windows Phone 8.1 BLU Win HD handset. Normally selling for $179, the phone will sell for just $129. Microsoft's 12 Days of Deals will last until December 19.