Cheapo Laptop Wars

Tweet

Best Buy should know better than to get in a bare knuckle mano-a-mano price war with Wal-Mart. That's like getting into a hairspray competition with a news anchor. Are you nuts?

Best Buy laid down the gauntlet recently with a $299 Acer 15 inch laptop. It's a great deal, if you can find one in stock.

Wal-Mart shot back this week with a Compaq 15 inch laptop for $298. Now that's what I call rolling back the prices!! One dollar!

I saw the Compaq in my local Wal-Mart sales circular and noted in the fine print that each store only has 10 units. In other words, they aren't serious about selling these things like hotcakes. It's clearly a loss leader to get more computer shoppers in the store who will hopefully buy something a bit more expensive when they see the $298 laptop is out of stock.

So, in the end there really isn't a cheap laptop war; just a laptop war.

My questions:

Will these hot teaser specials persist when Windows 7 comes out or is this just the desperate act of PC sellers dog paddling by until October 22nd when the new O/S comes out?

Are the red hot netbook sales cannibalizing regular laptop sales too, too much and is this evidence of preserving traditional laptop sales?

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio