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With its attractive deep-red finish and roomy 10-inch screen, this Asus Netbook is a tough bargain to beat.

Update (10:55 a.m. PT): Sorry, folks, looks like the Netbook's already sold out. Stay tuned for a new deal later today! (In the meantime, the two backup deals below are still good.)

When it comes to super bargains, I have to confess I rarely think of Best Buy. But the store's been rocking some pretty solid deals of late.

For example, today only (and while supplies last), Best Buy has the 10-inch Asus Eee PC 1005HAB Netbook for $229.99. That's not including sales tax or shipping (the latter will run you $11.50).

This isn't your average, boring, black Netbook: the sale model has a stylish "deep red" lid and wrist rest.

Other than that, however, the specs are pretty standard: Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, and the aforementioned 10.1-inch screen. The OS: Windows XP Home, not Windows 7.

That's the only real ... Read more

We began our look into holiday retail desktops in the beginning of November, reviewing a total of 16 systems that ranged in price from $199 to $1,199. Five weeks later, we have our top picks. This is also the end of a year spent focusing heavily on desktops available at brick-and-mortar retail outlets, and we think we learned something.

Gateway's DX4822-01 is our favorite budget desktop available at retail this holiday.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Budget pick

Desktops in our budget category ranged from the $199 Acer Aspire Revo 1600 to the $510 Gateway DX4822-01. We always advocate spending as much as your budget can handle for the purposes of longevity, so we weren't surprised when we found we liked the aforementioned Gateway best of the six desktops in this group for its speed and large 1TB hard drive.

Just in time to round out your holiday shopping season, we've consulted the Web traffic oracles and compiled a list of the most popular laptops of 2009.

Based on which system reviews CNET readers clicked on most often, this list shows what's on the minds of laptop shoppers -- and the emphasis is clearly on value over all else.

We've got six Netbooks in the top 10, including the Asus Eee PC 1005HA, which we've held up as a classic example of a Netbook done right. Apple, and 13-inch laptops in general, are also well-represented. Interestingly, while five major PC brands are represented, there are a few big names missing in action, including Gateway, Lenovo, and Toshiba.

To see what the most popular laptops of 2009 were, based on reader interest, click through to the slideshow below.

Top 10 most popular laptops of 2009 (photos)

In our current roundup of retail-specific laptops, we've divided our 25-plus systems into four price categories, from sub-$700 budget models to high-end ones that cost more than $1,000.

In the "high-end" category, we looked at four off-the-shelf models that all retail for $999 and above. While there's certainly a lot to like about the $2,000 HP Envy 15 (it sported the highest screen resolution and a new Core i7 processor), we thought the best bang for your buck was to be found in the Sony Vaio FW560, which has a big 500GB hard drive and Blu-ray, all for $999.

If you're looking for something even less expensive, the Sony Vaio NW270 offers no-frills Blu-ray for $699.

Note: For a roundup of retail laptops in all price ranges, check here.

Check out details of each system below:... Read more

In our current roundup of retail-specific laptops, we've divided our 25-plus systems into four different price categories, from sub-$700 budget models to high-end ones that cost more than $1,000.

In the "Netbook" category, we looked at three off-the-shelf models that all retail for $399. While you can get a similar set of components for around $100 less if you shop around, these models all offered some kind of step-up feature, from the Gobi 3G antenna in the Asus 1005HA, to the faster Atom N280 CPU and big touchpad in the Toshiba NB205, to the exotic design of the HP Mini 110.

Our favorite from this group was the Toshiba mini NB205-N325BL, because of its excellent battery and touchpad, but we'd actually look into stepping up to an HD model, such as the HP Mini 311, or else trading down to a basic entry level $299 Netbook.

Note: For a roundup of retail laptops in all price ranges, check here.

Check out details of each system below:... Read more

As Black Friday approaches and everyone readies their wallet for the next big holiday deal, remember that it's getting increasingly difficult to spot good laptop innards from, well, less ideal ones. We've made this point before with the most frequent culprit of the Black Friday Doorbuster...the Celeron processor. Many 15-inch laptops that are advertised at about $300 or less are practically guaranteed to have this elderly single-core CPU at its core, but in the case of the Celeron, all you have to do is keep an eye out for that Celeron sticker on the display model.

More sneaky is the world of ultra-low-voltage (ULV) processors. Designed as slower-running, more power-efficient CPUs ideal for thin-and-light ultraportables, they can help extend battery life while still affording better-than-Netbook performance, especially in their dual-core form.

However, Intel's Core 2 ULVs get slapped with a "Core 2 Duo" sticker on their packaging, and can easily be confused for more ... Read more

Scott playing Left 4 Dead 2 on the Asus 3D laptop.

(Credit: Dan Ackerman/CNET)

Earlier this week, Asus unveiled a 15-inch laptop with Nvidia's 3D Vision technology built in. The $1,699 Asus G51J 3D has a 120Hz LCD panel, an Intel Core i7 CPU, and a high-end Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M GPU, and comes bundled with a pair of Nvidia's active glasses and the USB-powered IR emitter required to make the glasses work.

We've just had a chance to take the system for a test drive, and came away largely impressed with the results, especially compared with Acer's Aspire 5738DG, a 3D laptop that uses a pair of passive polarized glasses and a special screen coating to create a 3D effect.

That Acer model was unfortunately underpowered for gaming, especially with the added overhead of running its 3D software in the background. The Asus G51J, on the other hand, with a high-end processor and video card, seemed well-suited for mid-to-high-end gaming. Of course, it lacked dual SLI video cards ... Read more

(Credit: Asus)

Hot on the heels of the well-regarded HP Mini 311, Asus has moved the Netbook bar forward by taking a 12-inch Netbook chassis and including both Nvidia's Ion graphics and a dual-core version of Intel's Atom processor (called the Atom 330). We've previously seen dual-core Atoms only in a handful of Nettop desktops, because of heat issues, and it's unlikely we'd see one in anything smaller than a 12-inch laptop body.

While still small, the 1201N fits in a full-size keyboard and a 250GB hard drive (plus access to 500GB of online storage space). The system comes with Windows 7 Starter and 2GB of RAM. Asus claims the 6-cell battery should last up to five hours, similar to what we've seen in other Eee PC models.

In a brief hands-on demo, we noted that the Asus Eee PC 1201N looks very similar to the current Eee PC line, including the popular 1005HA, with a black glossy finish and textured touch pad.

Combined with a 1,366x768 HD ... Read more

As most laptops are essentially commodity products comprised of the same stock list of components and parts, one might assume that all laptop brands are the same, at least as far as the general reliability of the hardware itself.

Warranty firm SquareTrade has just released a research paper analyzing the failure rate for 30,000 laptops comparing brands and hardware categories--and the results might surprise you.

The headline news is that over three years, one out of three laptops will fail, and that Asus and Toshiba laptops have the lowest failure rates, while Acer, Gateway, and HP have higher than average failure rates. Additionally, two-thirds of those problems are hardware malfunctions, while the final third are classified as accidental damage.

Netbooks, in particular, didn't fare as well--as one might expect from low-cost machines. They failed at a rate 20 percent higher than mainstream laptops. But keep in mind, since Netbooks are a relatively new category, this is based on only one year of data.

The full report can be found at the SquareTrade Web site, ... Read more