Aug 15, 2009 4:44 pm US/Eastern
$299 Wal-Mart Laptop Poses Competition To Netbooks
NEW YORK (AP) ―
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A staff of Taiwan's computer brandname vendor Acer Inc holds a low-priced mini laptop during a press conference in Taipei on June 3, 2008. I
Sam Yeh/Getty Images
These laptops sport big screens, optical drives, plenty of memory, and reasonable graphics horsepower. In other words, this is nothing like a $299 Netbook.
And, in case you haven't noticed, they sell out quickly. The $298 Wal-Mart laptop was gone before most people could reach for their wallet and the Best Buy $299 Acer laptop vanished almost overnight once the price went viral.
Best Buy chimed in again very briefly for a few days (during the week of August 3) with a $299 Toshiba laptop sporting a 15-inch screen but then bumped the price up to $329.
But whether it's a $298, $299, $309, or $329, it's a laptop design that has landed. And it a real competitor to the 10-inch Netbook, which costs about the same.
Here's the challenge: a lot of the Netbook's appeal is price. If retailers offer something with more robust hardware in the same price range, these tiny laptops are at risk of falling off back-to-school shopping lists.
And speaking of beefier hardware. The salient specifications of the Toshiba include a 2.2GHz Intel Celeron processor 900, 2GB of memory, DVD-RW/CD-RW drive, 15.4-inch screen, 160GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm), 802.11b/g wireless, 10/100 Ethernet LAN, Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, and Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic Edition operating system.
It was reviewed by CNET when it was $350. With a few more dollars knocked off the price, it may warrant at least an additional half-star.
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