$799

HP Folio 13 ultrabook dips to $799 at Wal-Mart

A new model in Hewlett-Packard's Folio 13 series is available at Wal-Mart for $100 less than the standard HP price, making one of the most highly rated ultrabooks to date also one of the least expensive.

The online Wal-Mart price is $798, about $100 less than the standard model on HP's Web site.

Wal-Mart's SKU uses a 1.4GHz Intel Core i3-2367M processor compared to the higher-end 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M chip in the $899 model on HP's site.

Everything else is pretty much the same, including 4GB of memory and a 128GB solid state … Read more

As ultrabook makers seek stronger sales, some opt for low cost

Ultrabook suppliers are still dealing with pesky market and profitability issues, according to a CNET source and two reports. And some will turn to low-cost designs as a result.

"The ultrabook adoption during the holiday season was ugly," an industry source, who speaks to ultrabook suppliers, told CNET. That source was speaking about sales for one particular ultrabook vendor.

The market for all ultrabook suppliers, however, is still challenging. "You've got a down market on the eve of a new operating system (Windows 8) at a price point that's fairly robust (high)," said the … Read more

Ultrabooks are underpricing Apple at retail--and they'd better

Ultrabooks from Toshiba, Acer, and Samsung remain at relatively low prices at major retailers like Best Buy compared to analogous offerings from Apple.

Prices for the 13-inch Toshiba Portege (Z835-P330) and 13-inch Acer Aspire S3 (S3-951-6646) have stayed at $799 for many weeks since they were announced last fall. Currently, both are listed at Best Buy for $799.99.

Comparable 13-inch MacBook Air laptops from Apple are typically priced a few hundred dollars more.

Apple is an important benchmark because the ultrabook category was created, in part, to compete with the increasingly popular MacBook Air. And an analyst said this week … Read more

Ultrabook holiday pricing on the cheap

Ultrabooks are available for the first time this holiday season. That calls for a quick survey of pricing since models have debuted at unexpectedly low prices.

As a refresher, ultrabooks are skinny (typically under 0.8 inches thick), lightweight (three pounds or less) laptops that offer mainstream mobile performance.

In short, they attempt to approximate the portability of a tablet while offering more horsepower via Intel processors. And, of course, they run full-blown Windows--not a minor point.

Pricing runs the gamut but the most-recently-released ultrabooks all fall below the $1,000 mark at retailers like Best Buy. That's important … Read more

Motorola Xoom priced at $799

In case you missed it, last weekend Best Buy briefly had Motorola's upcoming Xoom tablet priced at $1,199.99 on its Web site, announcing it would be available for preorder on February 17. Well, as rumors suggested, that price tag was only "placeholder" pricing, and Motorola Mobility's CEO Sanjay Jha today confirmed that the 10.1-inch tablet would sell for an unsubsidized $799 at Verizon Wireless, with a Wi-Fi-only version priced at around $600.

Reuters reported that Jha, who's in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress trade show, remarked to reporters, "Competing with … Read more

Kindle owners stage e-book price protest

Wired's Gadget Lab blog has a story about how a group of about 250 Kindle owners are staging an online protest over Kindle e-books that cost more than $9.99. The weapon they're using is Amazon's own tagging system, as price offenders are getting hit with a special "9 99 boycott" tag.

The roving--and most likely growing--band of annoyed Kindle owners includes such folks as Connecticut librarian Crystal O'Brien, who spends "a few minutes every day in the Kindle book store tagging the more expensive digital books with the '9 99 boycott' tag … Read more