Price Bustin' Vista Laptops

It didn't take long for loaded Vista laptops to start dropping in price, I think we have Acer to thank for the new low prices.

Laptop weirdness is now setting in. Recently Acer moved into the #3 laptop sales position behind HP and Dell.

HP is SO scared that they've sued Acer for the second time in as many months over technology that is basically part of almost any laptop's architecture...as HP well knows (the AOpen leg of the Acer group provides motherboards and cases to multiple laptop makers). They're scared because after finally regaining the most lucrative market share of the current computer market (laptops), they want to ride the tide as long as they can.

Recently, their have been many Big name budget laptops for under $800, but most have been saddled with Vista Home basic, and a Gig (or less) of memory. A few machines in the $500 range from Compaq and Toshiba don't even have burners or wide screens....But in the last two weeks their have been some exceptional values in hardware. Last week Best Buy offered an Acer AS5610-4648 for $699 (no rebate, just run as fast as you can in the store and grab one).
Centrino 2350, 2gig RAM, 160gig HD, rotating Webcam, 15.4 widescreen, Intel ProWireless, and everything (except lightscribe) burner, though it does not have firewire (almost Moot these days). At this price, you'd be hard pressed to buy a Desktop with the same features for a similar price.
HP fired back this week at Office Depot with a HP Pavilion dv2312us for the same price of $699 (via a $200 rebate)... another run and buy it before it's gone laptop with almost identical features except for: 14.1 widescreen (smaller screen, but 1 pound lighter; a fair exchange), AMD TL-52 processor with nVidia chipset (less shared video memory), Webcam with mic (camera is fixed, not rotating), 2gig mem and 120gig HD. In addition it has a firewire port and it's burner has LightScribe (being a HP it should).

Most of the folks buying these won't notice the difference in performance the processors are so evenly matched, but some things to consider for each unit:

Acer: Centrino 2350 Duo processor has much better wireless integration and energy savings, it has a slower bus speed than the HP, but more processor cache memory which is (I think) more important. Centrino Duo models also have exceptional battery life, expect about 3-4 hours with the standard battery, but don't look for an Acer branded larger battery if you want it, it's not available.
Intel ProWireless is IMO the best chipset with the fewest amount of problems of any of the three wireless chip makers.
Ships with a Vista CD (not a restore CD, but a clean install CD), and burn your own recovery DVD utility.
PCMIA type II slot, works with cards you already have.
5in1 card reader.
Webcam rotates.
Larger mulit-partitioned Hard drive
No Firewire (out of luck with some miniDV video cameras)

HP: AMD TL-52 X2 processor, I've used a number of boxes with this processor, it's fast, but a power sucker, battery life will be very short (two hours tops) with the standard battery and typical power settings, but the boon is that you can buy an extended 12 cell battery (double the capacity) for this laptop from HP directly and get probably 4-6 hours of use on one charge (add another $100).
HP quickplay (play CD's and DVD's without booting Windows, and it comes with a REMOTE!
XpressCard/54 slot: Great for the future, but not many Xpress cards out there yet, and they are $$$.
FireWire port.
HP expansion port, lets you use a HP docking station
Video: The nVidia chipset is typically a better type than the Intel on the Acer, but this one can only share 128meg of system memory, skip it if you're buying this for WOW (I wouldn't recommend either of these laptops for high end gamers).
Broadcom wired and wireless Ethernet chipset (my least favorite chipset).
5in1 card reader
Burn you're own recovery DVD (no Vista disk).

They're are a host of other smaller details on the spec's, but I think you get the idea. If you're looking for a good low end laptop, don't even bother with anything that has LESS than the specifications of these two laptops...and expect better deals coming.

On another Note: All the Best Buy's in my area sold out of the Acer's in just two days. Every Office Depot near me still has a ton of the HP's. I think this says something about the real value of having a lower price over a rebate.

On reliability: I've set up tons of HP laptops over the last few years, and on the whole, they have been O.K....until they left my hands. The aftermath is another story all together and best left to the dismal customer service phone center reps at HP. I've recently set up a bunch of Acer's ranging from the Aspire 5100 series up to the Travel Mate's. They are very slick, and of the one's I've set up in the last few months, I haven't heard of a single problem out of any of them, but Acer doesn't have much of a service track record to check on....but when you call their service center....you do get someone who has actually spoken english all their life.