Retailers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy are selling out of brand-name laptops priced at or around $299, proving that the most attractive thing about buying a netbook is the price.

Over the last year, netbook sales have been the sunny spot in an otherwise gloomy PC market. In fact, netbook sales are forecast to grow as much as 65 percent by the end of 2009.

However, it seems as though it might not be the portability or battery life that netbook buyers are after – it’s the price point. Consumers may be swarming to netbooks because the competitive price point among the devices is $299.

The new trend that may be hard to beat is a full 15-inch laptop for just $299. Both Wal-Mart and Best Buy have released a limited number of $299 laptops only to see them sell out in a flash.

Amazingly enough, these aren’t laptops from third-rate no-name manufacturers either. The laptops these retailers are selling at $299 are from Compaq and Toshiba.

First Best Buy introduced a 15-inch Acer model for $299 with an AMD Athlon 64 processor and 160 GB hard drive. Needless to say it was tough to get your hands on one.

Wal-Mart followed suit recently by under-cutting Best Buy’s price by one dollar. The retailer sold a 15-inch Compaq Presario with similar specifications for $298.

Now Best Buy is releasing another 15-inch laptop at a price to compete with netbooks. The 15-inch Toshiba laptops are selling so fast that the company bumped the price up to $329.

Who knows how much longer the retailers and laptop manufacturers can stomach these price reductions considering that laptops such as these often sell for as much as $1000. However prices like these are putting older names such as Toshiba and Compaq back in the game.

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Entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 9:08 am under Notebook, Retail.

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