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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