Retail Watch: Prices sliding at Best Buy as well

We continue our "Retail Watch" round-up with a look at Best Buy's circular ad. There we find the new usual suspects, the $400 laptop, the $500 laptop, the netbook, and such. All prices are without rebates as Best Buy hatorades rebates.

The Bargain Duo
We start with the new obligatory $400 laptop, in this case, is is the Acer AS5735-4774 which is on clearance. It has very usable specs for the price, 2gb memory, 160gb disk, dual core Pentium, and 15.6" widescreen. It's not even the "old" 15.4" widescreen. So clearly in terms of computing power it beats the bleep out of netbooks at similar prices.

At $500, also on clearance, we find the Gateway T6330u. This is a 14.1" widescreen, with a dual-core Pentium processor, 3gb of memory, 250gb disk, dvd burner and even wireless-N. Battery life is claimed to be 2 hours and 45 minutes. This is again a nice price for the feature set.

New Exclusive: HP dv7-1245dx
Best Buy has yet another exclusive, in the "affordable entertainment" frontier, with the $700 HP dv7-1245dx. A dual-core Turion X2, 4gb memory, 320gb disk, and such are its main specs.

Netbooks Attack!
Not one, but two netbooks are featured in this weekly circular - yet another sign of their increasing popularity among the general population. The two featured netbooks are the ASUS EeeePC 1000hd for $350 (10", XP Home) and the HP Mini 1030nr for $400 (10.2", XP Home).

The ASUS Invasion
But it's not just EeePC, the ASUS invasion continues with their "regular" laptops. The golden-yellow ASUS X83VB-X1 is spotlighted on clearance for $650. With a Core 2 Duo processor, Centrino, 14.1" wide display, 4gb memory, 250gb disk, nVidia GeForce 9300M GS (w/512mb dedicated memory), and almost 3.5 hours of battery life it makes for a tempting temptation for those who are easily tempted :)

The Expensives
That is a relative term, and relative it is within the universe of this circular ad :) The highest price belongs to the affordable gamer laptop, the Gateway P7805u selling for $1050, with a Core 2 Duo P8400 processor, 4gb DDR3 memory, 320gb disk (7200rpm), nVidia 9800M GTS (w/1gb DDR3), and stylish design.

Dell has a 13.3" model on clearance, the Dell X1330-1468 for $900. The price is not as good as the 13.3" model at Staples this week, but it packs a T8100 dualcore, 4gb memory, 320gb disk, and things like that.

And the last of this trio is the Sony VGN-FW235J/H for $750, also on clearance. So much clearance, is CES around the corner or something? (YES!) This is a Centrino laptop with near 3.5 hours battery life (claimed), 4gb memory, 250gb disk, and a 16.4" (16:9) Cinematic widescreen display. Leave it to Sony to come up with a cool name and then charge an extra $100 for it ;-)