Editor’s Note: Molly Wood is an executive editor and on-camera personality at CNETTV.com. An absolute tech whiz, Wood uses her expertise and passion for ruthless industry analysis in the weekly Buzz Report video blog, a sort of "Daily Show" for tech news. In addition, Molly also co-hosts CNET’s hysterical Buzz Out Loud podcast, while her "Gadgettes" podcast definitely proves that girls can be geeks too. And we mean that as a compliment. As if that’s not enough, Molly’s a frequently requested technology expert and has appearances on the "Today Show," CNBC’s "Power Lunch" and "On the Money," "Regis & Kelly" and countless other programs throughout the country. That said, we’re very pleased to announce that Molly will be sharing her nuggets of tech wisdom with you on a regular basis, here at wowOwow.

If this is your first time buying a laptop computer, here’s the good news you need to know: They’re small, and they’re cheap. In fact, if you’re looking for a perfectly purse-sized laptop that costs under $500 (or even under $300), that day has arrived!

The newest trend in laptops is something called a “netbook.” A netbook is a tiny little laptop, about the size of a trade paperback book, in some cases, or a hardback book at their largest. These ultra-portable computers weigh less than three pounds, they fit nicely into a decent-sized purse (you may not even need a separate laptop bag!), and they’re made for surfing the Web, reading and sending e-mail and maybe doing lightweight office work. And they’re amazingly inexpensive. You can find netbooks from Hewlett Packard, Dell and companies like MSI (their “Wind” netbook even comes in pink) and Asus for between $300 and $800, and heading into the holiday shopping season, the cute, white little Asus EeePC laptop is actually under $300.

So, with this in mind, let’s consider the new laptops just introduced by Apple on October 14. For comparison’s sake, Apple makes its own netbook, called the MacBook Air. Yes, it’s incredibly thin and gorgeous looking, but it’s also similar in features to the other netbooks I mentioned, and it starts at $1,799. Apple’s other laptop upgrades include the high-end MacBook Pro and the more everyday MacBook, which is, for the first time, available for under $1,000 — exactly one dollar under $1,000.

As usual, the new Apple laptops are sleek and attractive, they have all that artistic cachet and they’ve got plenty of neat technology tricks and graphics built in. But here are a few things you need to consider when you’re laptop shopping. Do you own other gadgets, especially a digital video camera? If so, that camera probably connects to your computer using a cable called FireWire. And Apple, inconveniently enough, has removed FireWire connectors from one of the MacBook models — so if you’ve got one of those cameras, make sure you don’t buy that one! Then there’s that price problem …

So, here’s my question: If you can have a netbook for less than $300, would you ever spend $1,799? If you can have a standard-power laptop for $700, would you spend $999? I know Apple people love their laptops (and I use a MacBook here at work), but is Apple making these new MacBooks a bigger hassle and giving them a bigger price tag at just the wrong time?

E-mail me your thoughts, and watch me take on the new MacBooks, Apple fans and the other hottest technology news of the week in my Internet show, the Buzz Report!