Budget-priced laptops and netbooks heading to market
Thursday, November 05, 2009
PC manufacturers are offering a range of low-priced netbooks and laptops, light on gadgetry and display drivers, but costing as little as $300, in the hopes of attracting bargain-hunters ahead of the holiday season.
Typical of this bargain laptop school of manufacturing is the Toshiba L455-S5975, which packs a DVD burner, 250 GB hard drive, large screen, and full-sized keyboard for the price of $350. While CNET describes the device's processor as "underpowered," $350 is still a bargain price for a fully functioning, modern laptop.
Even cheaper are some 10-inch-screen netbooks like the Dell Mini 10v, which offer better portability and battery life than their bigger cousins, but sacrifice even more performance and ability to do it. Such netbooks are available for as little as $300, but prospective buyers should be warned that they generally lack optical drives and carry little in the way of hard drive space or RAM.
The portable PC market is startlingly bifurcated, according to most analysts, with a contrast between increasingly expensive executive toys at one end of the market and stripped-down budget models at the other.