AT&T to Sell Netbooks Linked to Data Plans
So, how do you know when a trend has really made it? When it hits the mainstream, hits it hard hoping to make a quick buck before consumers realize that they are being ripped off. Coincidentally, striking enough customers in this way can also kill a trend. We may be seeing a little bit of both in AT&T's announcement that "In the coming days" it will start selling Dell Mini 10, Acer Aspire One and Lenovo S10 Netbooks at their brick and mortar stores and online.
This may sound a bit dramatic and I suppose it is since Verizon and Sprint are doing more or less the same thing, but the fact of the matter is that buying into the bait and switch built into the sale of Netbooks in this way will get you ripped off. In the case of AT&T the three models will all sell for $200, which is a little over a $100 savings on what you would pay via standard retail, but just as with a cellphone plan you must also buy into a two-year data contract. The two on offer will run you either $40/mon for 200MB/mon of bandwidth, or $60/mon for 5GB/mon. The latter plan sounds a lot more realistic, but still light if users do even a fair amount of downloading and/or visit graphic heavy sites. Regardless, the long and short of this is that those coming in at the tail end of the Netbook boom, and make no mistake this is who is targeted here, should be wary and adopt a Web savvy approach. Saving a $100 or so dollars upfront is not a good deal if over two years you are paying $1,000 to $1,500 for the data plan. To me this sort of arrangement just comes across as way too similar to the pay structure those of us who were chugging across the Internet on dial-up in the 1990s were stuck with. The difference is that in those days often times there was no way around this, but today if you are caught up in this you may be a sucker. If you need to be online all the time whwn away from home, do what you will, but if not do yourself a favor. If you are in the market for a Netbook, pay the best retail price possible and hit the plethora of hotspots available everywhere. You'll be glad you did and perhaps the lack of dollars flowing into the coffers of the wireless carriers will force them to offer customers decent options instead of going for the quick buck.
--Tom Milnes
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computers cheap on July 16, 2010 at 01:16 AM
I think these net books must have been helpful for those people who usually deal with so much of data all the time and as this system comes with data plans it would be easier to manage.