There’s incredible competition among the big box retailers come the holiday shopping season (places like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target, for instance). Everyone runs great deals on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving in case you’ve been living under a rock) and you can usually find laptops for cheap. However, the increasing competition means that some places come up with pre black Friday laptop deals to capture some of that consumer money before the doors open on the most hallowed shopping day of the year. It’s smart. There are plenty of consumers that don’t want to deal with the crowds and fighting for merchandise and would be happy to spend a little more money to get a good deal.

Best Buy was the first to strike with a pre black Friday laptop deal this year. On November 11 they launched what is said to be the lowest price laptop ever (not including Netbooks, which are barely computers). It’s an Acer Extensa EX5230E-2177 and it comes with a 2.2 GHz Intel Celeron 900 Processor, 2 GB of RAM, and a 160 GB hard drive. It’s a good computer for hitting the web to watch videos or browse for information, among other simple tasks. You can do basic word processing, manage your digital picture collection, etc. The best part is that the laptop goes for $250, which is an astoundingly good price. They must be looking to get rid of inventory because it’s hard to imagine they’re turning a profit on that. Bless them for starting the competition for customers early! Read more

Belkin CushTop stand: $14.99 at Amazon

If you were looking for a laptop stand that allows you to work on your laptop while comfortably sitting on a couch or a chair, you have got to jump on this offer from Amazon. They’re offering Belkin notebook CushTop stands for as low as $14.99 which is 50% of its regular price. It is big enough to fit even a 17-inch laptop on its side B (while side A is for 15-inch notebooks), has high-durable construction with furniture-like upholstery and a storage pocket where you can put a mouse, power adapter or other laptop accessories. And the price that Amazon currently has for it makes it a very sweet deal and a great addition to your laptop. Read more

With the release of its 14 inch XPS 14z notebook Dell is able to claim the title of world’s thinnest fully featured laptop. What they mean is that it has a slot-loading optical drive (DVD drive), unlike the MacBook air. If you’ve always wanted a super thin notebook but need that drive, your day has come.

The laptop starts at $999 but it comes with a fair amount of power for that cost. It’s built on Sandy Bridge platform and comes with an Intel i5 or i7 dual core processor, up to 8GB of memory, and you can put in an impressive NVidia video card if you like to play games or what tons of movies. If you’re a power used the 256GB solid state drive is wonderful and will make your computer much faster. The standard hard drive is 750GB, proving plenty of space. The computer is available in the US on November 1 and worldwide November 15. Read more