Best Buy Beats Walmart's Laptop Price, Computer War Looms

(MoneyWatch)  Oh, we spoke too soon! Sort of. We didn't think that Best Buy was going to take Walmart's bait this time, but the electronics retailer has announced that tomorrow it will launch its lowest-advertised-price laptop computer ever and beat the cost to consumer of Walmart's Thanksgiving special notebook ?€" a price that matches that retailer's lowest ever computer price ?€" by almost $50.

Best Buy (BBY) will offer, both online and in store, a $250 Acer laptop, with the stated reason being to draw consumer attention to the entirety of its computing line and the 30 laptops, six netbooks, 17 desktops and four all-in-ones if offers, not to mention the opportunity to upgrade to Windows 7. The chance to steal a march on Walmart (WMT) isn't mentioned, but, come on! We're clearly looking at that long-predicted computer war, only this one is being fought with press releases and online advertising instead of nuclear missiles and laser satellites.

Selling in-store and online for $249.99, the Acer (ACER) laptop will offer a two-gigabyte memory and a 160-gig hard drive compared with the $298 Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) notebook offered by Walmart, with specs there being three gigabytes of memory and a 250-gig hard drive. This summer, Walmart's $298 computer deal also had more robust hardware than Best Buy's, but then it was a buck cheaper.

At press time, by the way, the three gig HP couldn't be found on Walmart's web site, although the site did offer a one-gig memory, 160-gig hard drive "Mini Notebook" for $297.95. The three gig may have sold out. Walmart was contacted but didn't return an inquiry on that by post time.

Still, as we noted in an earlier post about Walmart's recent promotions, Eduardo Castro-Wright, the company's vice chairman, promised that the company would not be undersold this holiday season. Could a $248 Walmart computer be on the way? Stay tuned.