The economy and the Sunday paper ads (example: Staples)

The state of the economy, along with price-competition from the netbooks, is certainly putting the squeeze on laptop prices. A new case in point is the latest weekly circular ad from Staples that goes live today (December 28) and is good for the whole week.

First of all, the $400 (after rebate) laptop is back from last week, the Presario CQ50-130us which is a very decently speced general purpose laptop. The rebate itself is $30, so if you hate rebates, you pay $430 instead. Either way, not a bad deal. This is after all has the essential features:

• a dual-core processor


• 2gb memory of memory


• 15.4" widescreen


• 160gb hard disk


• dvd burner with lightscribe even


• wifi (b/g) and memory card reader

So essentially, if you are buying solely on price-point, there is no reason to get a netbook. Now if you are buying in terms of portability, mobility, battery life, etc, that's a totally different story for another day :-)

13.3" cuties get down to Earth too
The 13.3" widescreen laptops were considered "luxury" items among PC (not Mac) users since they had a major price premium for their smaller size but full functionality. Even the "luxury" premium is shrinking though, as you can get the Dell Inspiron 1318 for $700 (yes, seven hundred) and that does not require any rebates. What you pay, is what you pay. Dell does not like rebates. And this is not some after-thought or un-earthed laptop, it's jam-packed with goodies:

• 4gb memory


• dual core T5800


• 320gb hard disk


• slot-loading dvd burner


• wireless, webcam, and card reader


• etc