After last years best buy secret deal of $229.98 Toshiba A135-S7403 Laptop & Canon 3-in-1 Printer Package, it should be interesting to watch what they do this year.

We've already seen a few nicely configured deals in the $400 price range come out in the last few weeks from Walmart and Frys. And that's without any sort of rebate.

I think the stores are putting Black Friday candidates on sale now to see what they get for interest.
The 2008 goal? $199.99 for an AMD/XP laptop, $499.99 for a loaded Intel/Vista model.

Yeah, I'm thinking there will be one slightly under $200 this year. And if it has XP, all the more better, in my opinion.

I don't think you'll see any XP laptops. The only way they can legally be sold is by selling with Vista Business or Ultimate which allows XP Pro downgrade rights. That will add $99 - $149 to the cost of the computer.

IMO if there are very cheap laptop deals it will come with Intel Mobile Celeron or AMD Mobile Sempron with Vista Home Basic and 1GB RAM. I'd like to see 2GB RAM though.