Windows 7 to usher in an ear of (relatively) cheap laptops.
 

Call it the Netbook halo effect: small and cheap is infectious. A quick peek at the lineups of new laptops slated for the Windows 7 (October 22) roll-out make it clear that the prices of mainstream and higher-end laptops are diving, even as the technology gets better.

"There's a new reality in laptop pricing," said Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at market-researcher IDC. "It's getting harder and harder to sell anything over $800." O'Donnell cited a data point that showed the average selling price of notebooks falling below desktops briefly in retail. "That may have been an anomaly, but the fact that's it's even close is indicative of this phenomenon."

That said, let's start with HP, the world's largest PC supplier. Svelte, well-built business laptops have historically been priced at a premium--starting at more than $1,000. Not anymore. On October 22, HP will begin selling the 13-inch ProBook 5310m that is about 0.9 inches thin, less than four pounds, and clad in an aluminum display enclosure and a magnesium alloy bottom case for $699.


HP ProBook 5310m starts at $699: this class of business laptop used to start at well over $1,000

(Credit: Hewlett-Packard That's about $800 less than the HP EliteBook 2530p business notebook series introduced in August of last year (that started at about $1,500). The 5310m is priced at $699 with an Intel Celeron dual-core processor and $899 with Intel Core 2 Duo chip.

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take a look at the acer timeline series. 15" under $600.

So...."ear" is the proper collective noun for "laptops?"
LOL!:p

lol. Meant era probably. Though the article uses the term "crush" wtf?

I went to a premiere of Windows 7 a couple months ago for work. It really is a slick operating system and much less resource intensive. I've been struggling with a desktop at home that's getting sicker and sicker (some bad hard drive blocks) and a slow laptop that I use most of the time, waiting for Windows 7. The biggest reason that Microsoft developed Windows 7 is because Vista was such a resource hog that the netbooks couldn't handle it. I'm excited about this one!

era...LOL

sorry guys.

But...something to think about. Laptop prices have been dropping substantially in the past 5 years. I am wondering if this means that we have reached a saturation point where laptops have become accessible to all.

AGdee..when is the last time you cleaned your PC's hard drive?

I'm backing it up, cleaning it and defragging it weekly. It's old and disk checks have shown bad blocks. Plus, it's almost full. It's time for a new PC. I'm just trying to get it to last another month or so.

Cool. Are you using an external drive? And what kind of PC are you looking in to trying to purchase?

I think I need to buy a new laptop too, take me close to 8 minutes to start it up.

If Windows 7 is low on resource, I might have to upgrade.

Hated Vista, slowed my desktop big time.

It gets pretty annoying when they keep bringing out something new every 2 weeks.

Yes, I'm using an external drive. I'm thinking I may do the "day after thanksgiving" dash to get a desktop cheap, so it depends on what's on sale that day :) I prefer Dell's or Gateways simply because they are so much easier to work on (case design, etc).