Best Buy launches $249.99 laptop

Laptop price wars hit a new low today, with Best Buy finally cracking through the $250 barrier by offering a new, $249.99 laptop from Acer.

While it's listed on the company's website, the super-cheap machine is noted as being available only in stores. Still, you can at least check out the features on the web: The Acer Extensa offers an Intel Celeron processor at 2.2GHz, 15.4-inch LCD with 1280 x 800-pixel resolution, 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, dual-layer DVD writer, 802.11n wireless, and integrated graphics. Windows 7 Home Premium -- 64-bit, even -- is pre-installed.

While I have no idea how solidly the machine is built or what the screen quality might look like in person, that's actually not a bad configuration, with only the Celeron processor giving me pause against recommending it, on paper at least.

But, good lord, that is a cheap computer. Even bare-bones netbooks are hard to find for less than $350, computers with half the RAM, Atom processors, no optical drive, Windows XP, and tiny screens and keyboards. Why on earth would anyone consider a netbook with half the power for $100 more cash -- unless they really wanted a near-pocketable computer above all else?

Of course it remains to be seen how many of these machines will actually be available in stores. Mega-deals like this often disappear quickly as only a handful of products are made available and for a limited time, designed as loss leaders to get warm bodies in cold stores. So holiday shoppers, I turn to you and ask you to report back if you venture into Best Buy in search of the $250 Extensa. Let us know: Are shelves empty and out of stock, or is Best Buy a true protagonist in this instance, giving customers their fill of cheap gear?