How Low Can Ultrabooks Go? – Toshiba Drops Price (Briefly) To $699

CNET’s Brooke Crothers reports that Toshiba is setting the pace for Ultrabook pricing so far, noting that after debuting at $799 last month, the Toshiba Portege Z835 is now selling for $699 at Best Buy (with a $200 instant rebate) — a price point that could be expected to give the $999 entry-level MacBook Air some grief if it held, but Crothers points out that the $799 price only lasted for about a week when Toshiba introduced the Z835 in November, and for the most part, the machine has been priced at $899, with Acer’s Aspire S3 and Hewlett-Packard’s Folio 13 also priced at just under $900 at Best Buy.

However, for $100 less than a base Core i5 11″ MacBook Air, you get a Core i3, 4GB DDR3 memory (as opposed to the $999 Air’s 2 GB), a larger 13.3″ LED-backlit display (1366×768), a 128GB solid state drive, three USB ports including one USB 3.0, and backlit keyboard. Toshiba’s Z835 weighs 2.5 pounds, measures 0.6 inches thick, and has a magnesium alloy enclosure.

It’s not a Mac of course, but with Windows 8 coming, and the changes in OS X 10.7 Lion proving underwhelming to some of us, a $900 13″ Ultrabook begins to look more attractive. Just saying.