WSJ reports avg laptop price now down to $1,000

There are so very many ways to read this bit of information, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that apparently the average cost of a laptop is now down to $1,000 from $1,250 last year and $1,640 in 2001. The figure makes sense in some ways, but we have a feeling that they arrived at this figure not because of falling component prices or a hypercompetitive laptops market, so much as the effects of companies like Dell cutting the bottom out and moving a lot of severely underequipped bargain-basement boxes. After all, don't you think it's safe to say that the cost of a good mid-range laptop is still around at least $1,400-1,800, where it's been for a good long while?