Laptop prices fall below the $ 300 threshold

Laptops are gradually narrowing the price gap with netbooks, as many retailers start selling full-featured laptops for a promotional price of less than $ 300 .

According to the latest post on Wal-Mart's Checkoutblog site, this huge supermarket chain will release a limited number of "standard" Compaq notebooks, complete installation and accessories, for a price only. 298 USD since July 26 here.

Source: Mobilemag This is the Compaq Presario CQ60-419WM model manufactured by HP. Using the 21, GHz 21-GHz AMD Sempron SI-42 chip, this laptop is installed with Windows Vista operating system, equipped with 15.6-inch screen, 3GB RAM, 160GB hard drive and integrated GeForce graphics chip Nvidia's 8200M. In addition, it also has a DVD player that can read and write.

With such an outstanding feature list compared to netbooks, plus the "cheap price", Wal-Mart predicts that Compaq Presario CQ60 will run out of stock very quickly. However, the company did not announce whether this promotion would apply at supermarkets or only online.

Wal-Mart's announcement came just days after rival Best Buy announced it would sell a laptop Acer 15.6-inch screen for $ 299. Using the 2.0 GHz AMD Athlon 64 single-core chip, this laptop also installed Windows Vista, equipped with a 160GB hard drive, but smaller RAM (2GB). Best Buy said all the promotional items were sold out in a single day.

To make it easier for readers to compare, the cheapest netbook on Wal-Mart's online store is priced at $ 238. The configuration is of course far from Compaq Presario. Specifically, Asus Eee P900HD equipped with 8.9-inch screen (nearly half as small as Compaq) and uses Intel Atom N270 chip with 1.6GHz speed. Its RAM is only 512MB and the operating system is only Windows XP Home Basic.

However, this is not the first time the laptop has dropped below the $ 300 threshold. In 2007, Toshiba offered a promotional price of $ 299 for a model of its product. Currently, most laptops listed on Wal-Mart's site are more than $ 350.

Wal-Mart also announced plans to promote a "great" Acer laptop with a battery life of up to 8 hours in the next few days. Acer will turn to another HP laptop.