Best Buy Blue Label: A Step in the Right Direction

Best Buy has recently released its Blue Label product line, based on their customer forum program that aimed to get actual customer feedback as to what they want in a product (similar to Dell's Community which resulted in Ubuntu being pre-loaded on many Dell computers).  Seems like good enough of an idea.  Best Buy partnered with Toshiba and HP to release the first products in the Blue Label line, two laptops.  The laptops are designed to meet consumers needs, and both laptops hit the mark pretty well.  The main guidelines laid out by consumers is a lightweight and thin design, back lit keyboard, extended service and anti-virus support, and long battery life.  These are pretty reasonable requests, nothing extravagant or cutting edge technology, yet there are very few reasonable priced laptops that meet these needs of the consumer.

 Both laptops are priced attractively below $1,200, and have impressive specs.  Both have Core 2 Duo processor, 4 gb RAM, 320 gb hard drive, all pretty standard for laptops today.  The laptops differ on screen size and batter life.  The HP has a 13.3" screen and a rated 4 hour 15 min battery life.  The Toshiba has a 14.1" screen and a rated 5 hour 30 min battery life.  Either of these laptops would be prefect for everyday use, and can handle any general computing task you have.  These are great laptops for high school and college students.  The extended service support also is great for the non-techie people looking for a laptop.  Both these laptops are worth a look the next time you are shopping for a computer.  I look forward to seeing Best Buy extend their Blue Label line in the future with more great and practicle offerings like these.

October 14, New MacBook Pro?

 

Apple has begun to send out its invitations to an even to be held on October 14th, and judging by the obvious photo on the invite it will be about the notebook side of Apple's products.  The Macbook Pro's have been due for a design refresh for quite some time.  The design has not changed for almost 7 years now (the insides have changed, but not the overall look).  I'm really excited to see what Apple comes up with.  The MacBook Pros are Apple's high end laptop and usually the notebook of choice in the creative community,  Whatever Apple announces could set a new tone of the company in the coming years as well as get Apple an even greater market share (they are currenty at around an 8% market share in personal computers).