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Best Buy chimes in with MacBook, laptop deals

Not to be outdone by Apple, Best Buy is offering some enticing deals on the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Windows laptops are also on sale.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
2 min read
Best Buy as of Friday afternoon is pricing the 2011 11.6-inch MacBook Air with a 64GB solid-state drive at $849.99.
Best Buy as of Friday afternoon is pricing the 2011 11.6-inch MacBook Air with a 64GB solid-state drive at $849.99. Best Buy

Best Buy is doing its part to make MacBooks more affordable--and also offering decent deals on Windows laptops.

11.6-inch MacBook Air: In the shadow of Apple's Black Friday deals, Best Buy is striving to stand out with better deals. And it's succeeding in some cases. For instance, the retailer is selling the 11.6-inch MacBook Air with an Intel Core i5 chip, 2GB Memory, and 64GB solid-state drive (model: MC968LL/A) for $849--that's about $50 less than Apple's Black Friday $898 sale price. (And note that MacMall has been selling a 2010 11.6-inch MacBook Air for $799.)

Shoppers camping out earlier this week in front of a suburban Los Angeles Best Buy. Most were waiting for TVs, though a few also mentioned laptops like a Samsung (model: NP-RV510-A05US) going for $299.
Shoppers camping out earlier this week in front of a suburban Los Angeles Best Buy. Most were waiting for TVs, though a few also mentioned laptops like a Samsung going for $299. Brooke Crothers

13.3-inch MacBook Pro: Best Buy is also beating Apple on the price of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 2.4 GHz Core i5 processor, 4GB of memory, and 500GB hard disk drive. At Apple it's going for $1,098 today only. As of Friday afternoon, Best Buy lists it for $1,049.99 (model: MD313LL/A).

Gateway Core i3 laptop: There's plenty of aggressive pricing for Windows laptops too as part of Best Buy's "Thanksgiving Weekend Sale." A Gateway 15.6-inch laptop with an Intel Core i3 processor is going for $329.99. That includes a Core i3-370M chip, 4GB of memory, optical drive, 15.6-inch LED-LCD, and 320GB hard disk drive (model: NV55C56U).

Gateway Netbook: A 10-inch Gateway Netbook (model: LT2811U) is now down to $149.99 That includes 1GB of memory, a 250GB hard disk drive, and N455 Atom processor. And expect to see more deals on Netbooks in the future. This category of small, Atom-powered laptops is struggling mightily against tablets like the iPad and Kindle Fire as retailers set aside less space for Netbooks in order to open up display area for tablets.

See Best Buy's Weekly Ads here.