Holiday Gift Ideas 2008: Laptops and Notebooks

Considering the number of sub-$500 products there are in this category, it’s no wonder that these are still on people’s wishlists given the faltering economy. The 2 biggest splashes this year arguably came from Apple with their new MacBook and the brand-new MacBook Air, but Dell also joined the still hot mini-laptop/netbook field with their Inspiron Mini 9 and 12, and other makers improved upon their existing minis or jumped on the bandwagon as well.

We also liked the HP tx2z which is a tablet notebook with multi-touch. Here are some ideas and prices on a few of these laptops/notebooks/netbooks.

Apple MacBook Pro (unibody Aluminum case, 17″ TFT LCD, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz 4GB 320GB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT) – $3200
Apple MacBook Air (2nd gen. 13″ LCD, 1.6Hz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, 120GB Serial ATA hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card) – $1700

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (Glossy 8.9″ LED screen, Intel® Atom Processor® N270 1.6GHz,Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950,Wireless 802.11g Mini Card, Win XP Home, 512MB DDR2 SDRAM, 8GB SSD) – $399.
Dell Insprion Mini 12 (Intel®Atom®Processor Z530 1.6GHz, Windows® Vista Home, 40GB PATA Hard Drive, 12.1″ widescreen TrueLife® Display (1280×800), Intel®Graphics Media Accelerator 500, 1GB DDR2 SDRAM, Wireless 802.11g Mini Card, Bluetooth 2.1, Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam) – $599.
Dell Studio Laptops – starting around $1250

Asus Eee PCsstarting at $249!

HP tx2z tablet notebook – starting at $1150

Vaio CR Series – starting at $799