Wall Street Journal says Laptops to be Cheaper this Holiday

<!-- Generated by XStandard version 1.7.1.0 on 2006-11-03T15:33:08 -->

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday laptops are going to be, on average, the cheapest ever this holiday season, mainly because of Vista delays and tough competition. It's estimated that 70 percent of notebook PCs sold over the next two months will be under $1,000.

The article that appeared in the WSJ yesterday listed several interesting points:

• Windows Vista delays will hurt sales somewhat because buyers were expecting to be able to get PCs loaded with Vista this holiday, but now they'll have to wait until January. The Windows Express Upgrade in which buyers will be able to upgrade to Vista for free if they buy a Vista ready notebook somewhat helps, but some consumers simply don't want to hassle with this.
  
  
• Current Analysis, a research firm that tracks PC sales, says that 70 percent of laptops sold this Christmas will be priced less than $1,000. In 2004 only 38 percent of laptops sold were less than $1,000. According to Samir Bhavani of Current Analysis 2006 will be &quot;a blowout sale.&quot;
  
  
• Sony VAIO's vice president of marketing Mike Abary said &quot;We expect to see the apex of price degradation to occur this holiday.&quot; Sony is offering the VAIO N series laptop for starting under $1,000 -- the first time they've introduced a new laptop that starts at such a price, usually Sony is more expensive and doesn't deal with price competition.
  
  
• Prices for 17-inch widescreen notebooks at Circuit City Stores in the USA have fallen from $1,300 to $1,000 recently, says Elliot Becker, vice president and merchandising manager of technology at Circuit City.
  
  
• Todd Bartee, director of sales for Dell, says they will be very competitive on price this holiday because &quot;Being direct to the customer gives us the opportunity to provide more value to the customer and continue to be price-competitive.&quot;
  
  
• An H-P spokeswoman says the company plans to stay price-competitive during the holiday season, while at the same time continuing its strategy for profitable growth.
  
  
• Gateway says it's launching a new NX570 series notebook on November 9 that will sell for $699 after a $200 discount for the holiday season. Gateway is going to offer some new notebooks in a copper / tungsten color this holiday to make them stand out design wise.
  
  
• H-P is delaying the launch of some notebook PCs until Vista's full-scale debut. Bruce Greenwood, director of product marketing for H-P's North America consumer notebooks, says the Palo Alto, Calif., company wanted to develop certain products to show off features of Vista, so it didn't make sense to launch them three months before the system is available. He declined to detail the new products.

The article is quite long and can be read in its full context here: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06306/735093-96.stm

The bottom line of the article is that competition is going to be tough this holiday season between the PC makers and it could be the best time to buy for good deals. The Vista delay may change some people's minds to buy, but most mainstream consumers will care more about price than waiting for Vista to be offered installed, so it could be the best time to make a purchase after all.

 

woohooo! the inevetable redesign of laptop and all pc stuff (mouse, keyboard, and whatnot) is coming! ouuuhh!! can't wait!

 

I can't wait for the reviews...it will be nice to finally see some built-for-Vista (not Vista-ready) notebooks.

 

wobble highlighted the exact part I was going to talk about. I've wondered what HP was going to do, now I know for sure I won't buy a laptop till vista is released. Thanks HP spokesperson!

Though I noticed that to combat the lower prices, HP increased its 2-Year support costs 40 bucks!

 

Oh crap why does this have to happen? Cheaper laptops and better designs? My dv6040ca would be worth nothing by the time I sell it.

 

Interesting. So should we wait out until Jan to buy a laptop?

The bugs won't be out of Vista by then. If we buy a C2D machine now (or a Core Duo) can we upgrade to Vista later? Or will these new machines have something else special to them that the machines now do not contain? (Other than the OS ofcourse, Vista vs current XP)

 

Just what we need more cheap fall-apart laptops.

 

I don't know why people act like a shipping OS is so buggy that the world will fall apart. People were doing just fine with beta Vista, let alone the pretty good RC2. Release vista will be just fine. Anyone saying otherwise is just deluding themselves.

I personally will wait till January to get a laptop since the integrated graphics options will be considerably better than they are now, plus Vista will already be on the machines.

 

With all this happening, I think it'll be wise to wait until January. This is at least what I'm planning to do; even if it means I'd be selling my laptop for $500.

Other than the puny LCD screen on the lid, I really can't think of anything else that'll "show off" the new features of Vista. Flash memory used for cache would debut when Santa Rosa arrives, so that leaves nothing else new on the table.

 

Somehow I doubt it. Santa Rosa would be the one with the new X3000 graphics chip and it's expected for an April 2007 launch. Would the GMA 950 be any faster when Vista comes out? Highly unlikely.

 

Considering I paid about $4500 for my first notebook--sub $1K systems are a steal. And 70% of notebooks sold at that price would be an incredible number.

The overall increase in worldwide notebook production should create industry-wide savings in common parts prices--so that performance systems can ride the wave and see some lower prices too.

 

Anybody else excited about tungsten color Gateways? I think I'd like to see a C3-PO colored laptop, just to change things up a bit.

I'm very curious to see what this brings too -- hopefully I can see a sneak preview at CES in January!

 

and a full-expense paid trip for all the other mods, right?

 

cy007: The Radeon 1250 and nvidia has a new IGP chipset coming out.. Both of those should be a lot better than today's offerrings.

Plus there's the other benefits of bigger HDD and Memory options. Since it seems to cost more for memory and HDD space as you get away from the base amount, it should be better for the end user (meaning if I want 1 gig of ram it'll be better because they'll be pushing 2 as their high margin sales point)

 

Wow really? That's great news! So how fast are we expecting them to be? Maybe just a tad slower than the Radeon Mobility X1300?

 

Okay. How much of a price drop are we expecting on machines? Particularily IBM machines? They seem to integrate new technology a tad bit later than other manufacturers, however, this seems to just be a software upgrade really (other than that integrated graphics chipset being talked about).

How good of deals does Christmas bring to notebooks? Do you know if Lenovo hold must have boxing day or Christmas sales? I recall seeing a 'employee pricing' scheme sometime earlier this year, or some sale of the like.

 

I'm up for it.

 

My prediction:

Well, tomorrow laptops will be the cheapest ever in the next holiday season!

 

Maybe 70% of those less than $1000 laptops will have AMD x2 Turion / T2xxx Core Duo / T56xx C2D / Pentium processors. Probably 512MB memory. Intel 950 graphics card. Windows XP Home Edition OS. 80G HD.

 

I definitely am. think it'll be based on an existing design or something totally new?

 

I don't think Integrated Graphics will do any good in the Vista realm. Go get a dedicated graphics card .

 

The Intel GMA950 actually is compatible with the Aero Glass interface and can run it, although I imagine it could get choppy at times. You are definitely best off with a dedicated card, but it is not absolutely necessary.

 

Which processor is necessary to run Vista (absolutely all features of Vista)? What processor is needed to run future 64-bit programs? (I assume a 64-bit processor for this answer - but can it be run on 32-bit?)

 

I just hope they choose to standardize, or streamline the components that keep the prices affordable so more people can get them.

 

Don't RAM prices flucuate in the opposite fashion? The less in demand certain RAM is, the more expensive a stick will cost? I was told from a family friend who puts together computers.

 

I'm really not too enthused about Vista.

The operating system proper may be stable, but the cost is absurd (I know that I'm not going to run out and spend $400 for an OS alone), and it makes demands on hardware that I don't think have been seen before. Also, the amount of unproven code in the thing makes me doubly uneasy.

XP Pro is going to stay on any laptop I buy at least until Vista SP1-and even then, I might not be too quick to upgrade.

It will be neat to see what Vista can do-I just don't want to be a victim of it when things go south.

 

Quoted for truth. And so, so sad. Yea it's better than a K6-2 from 7 years ago in absolute terms, but still. As soon as you get any good parts in a laptop you're at $1500+.