Market Watch: Best Buy price drops

We continue our market watch series with a look at the price drops at Best Buy, using this week's Sunday circular as our reference guide.

As we saw with their bitter rival, it looks like the $400 may be here to stay after all. Best Buy's "contribution" is a clearance of the Compaq GQ50-215nr. This is a good general-use laptop, with 2gb of memory, AMD X2 dual core processor, 15.4" wide display, 160gb disk and the usual fare of entry-level features. Add to that Best Buy's aversion to rebates, and you have a $400 OTD laptop. Assuming of course you can find it in-stock. OTD being out-the-door, and of course that's assuming your state does not collect sales tax.

14.1" from basic to stylish
The 14.1" continue to be the best trade-off between size, mobility and price, and if you don't have to have the latest model, you can find some mid-price-range deals, like the HP dv4-1125nr for $650. The battery life is claimed to be over three hours - but that's the claim the manufacturer makes so your milage may vary. It has a dual core processor, 4gb memory, 250gb disk, and all the usual features you would expect in this range.

But if battery life is a high-priority, HP claims that the Pavilion dv4-1155se, a Best Buy exclusive model, can deliver almost 6 hours, assuming of coruse ideal (test) conditions. This has an AMD X2 ultra dual core processor, 4gb memory, 320gb disk, and things like that. There is, as you can expect, a price premium on the "newness" and battery life boost, you pay $850.

Clocking in similar battery life, and costing 150 more is the Toshiba E105-S1402, with a Centrino P8400 dual-core, 4gb memory, 320gb disk, backlit keyboard, and thickness of around 1 and a quarter inches. This is also a Best Buy special edition model. When you are as big as Best Buy, you can has special edition laptopz ;-)

The Others
No, we are not talking about Season Four of LOST! There are thre emore models listed in the circular, one is a 13.3" exclusive model, the HP dv3-510nr for a cool one thousand bucks. It has the P7350 Centrino dual core, 4gb memory, 320gb disk and a graphics fan favorite, its own graphics module, in this case, the nVidia GeForce 9300M GS which brings its own half a gigabyte of dedicated memory. And if you want to stand-out from the crowd, this does have a unique etched finish. Battery life is estimated at over four hours.

For those who like bigger (read: 17") widescreens, the prices are coming down too. The Dell Inspiron S17-144B is down to $700, and it comes with 3gb memory, dual core cpu, 320gb disk, slot-loading burner, and things like that.

Last but not least, the most popular and populous format of 2008 (but perhaps not of 2008), the 15.4" widescreen laptop. In this case, it is not an entry-level, it is a Sony, the Vaio VGN-NS190J/L for $800. Apart from the brand premium, you get a BluRay player, Centrino dual core, 4gb memory, 250gb disk, and the usual assortment of features. Did we mention BluRay? With Sony continuing to throw its weight behind it, we should see blu-ray players (not necessarily burners) in more sub-$1000 laptops in 2009.

This concludes our weekend market watch series! Stay tuned to this blog for more interesting, unique, off-beat, boring or perhaps tragically unhip features and specials :-)