mike_barton
Editor

MacBook: price parity a first?

news
May 17, 20061 min

Apple’s new 13-inch widescreen MacBook in black has road warrior written all over it. But perhaps more interesting is that it will, for the first time, put a Mac notebook a near price parity with closely equipped Wintel laptops.

View the new MacBook in black

And don’t forget Boot Camp means Windows on the new Intel-based MacBooks is but a restart away.

At the full-tilt, and if you want business black, the MacBook is well well equipped (especially if you consider the Mac software bundle) at $1,499. They start at $1099.

Yeah, you can buy some Celeron Dells for about $500, but that’s not what these compete with. HP-Compaq’s new NC6400, which is pretty close, sells for $1549 online.

I think 14-inch widescreens are the sweetspot for portability and big as needed screen. The new MacBook is 13-inch, which nudges more into ultralight and is probably pretty good for most uses. And, despite having to pony up for a full version of XP if you go dual boot, the ability to do so could be enough to push some now that price parity is there.

Is price parity the big news here? Talk back to us below.

mike_barton

Mike Barton started out in online slinging HTML for CNET.com in the late 1990s and began his editorial career at New Media magazine shortly thereafter. In his early days, he was an editor at Ziff-Davis's PC Computing and ZDNet.com before heading Down Under, where he produced and edited the business and technology sections of The Sydney Morning Herald online. After returning to the States in 2006, he has worked for IDG's Infoworld, PCWorld, Computerworld, and CSO Online. He currently edits and produces WIRED.com's Innovation Insights, and is a contributing editor at ITworld.

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