Notebook PCs at bargain prices. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Throughout the holiday buying season…consumers have been able to find notebook PCs …at prices that seem pretty remarkable. Lots of machines are priced at 5 or 6 hundred dollars. At PC maker Gateway…now a part of Acer…700 dollars buys a notebook with an Intel dual core processor. For about 11 hundred dollars…the M150XL features Draft N Wireless…a Core 2 Duo Processor….two gigabytes of memory….and an HDMI connection that lets you hook up to a big flat screen. Product manager Todd Titera….

"This unit comes with discreet graphics, so you have all the power and performance to be able to play some of the latest games and to really enjoy all your multimedia content. Other little things like finger print readers ..that is terrific to be able to log onto your system, log on to different Web sites and really have that security and peace of mind as you travel the Internet and do other things with your PC. It comes with a Web cam for even more fun."

The sleek design comes in red, blue or grey. Missing from the design is a firewire port….which can be handy for connecting to many digital camcorders. As competition continues to intensify….between Hewlett Packard, Dell, Gateway, Sony, Toshiba and others…. Consumers are coming out ahead…getting more features for their money. Gateway has opted to take a wait and see approach on offering either Blu-ray or HD DVD capability….

"We're waiting and we're listening to our customers on which one they want. And right now, no one's asking for it."

Toshiba continues to push HD DVD….while Sony pushes Blu-ray. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.