Rumors were off a bit. Actual price was $50 higher and the Dells were late hitting the market.
Read reviews or buy one cheap at http://www.NetbookComputers.com

Dell blew it? I don’t think so. Looks great…priced right…and most people will never miss the function keys…because most never use those keys anyway (I am on a device with no function keys right now).

I still think the HP mininote sets the standard for these devices, $499 gets a very nice unit and 80 bucks more puts fully-supported Windows on it.

I just wish HP would upgrade the thigh-burning C7 with the newer Via Nano or Atom. Another item on my HP mininote wishlist would be a 10″x6.5″x0.5″ slim li-poly slice battery underneath, if only to keep the heat away from the bottom.

Dell is probably relying on their brand name to sell millions of these & didnt want to put much money into R&D because they could get away with it. unfortunately the once these are out everywhere & become the “face” of netbooks the uninformed general public will get to see them & be very unimpressed.

it doesnt really surprise me Dell blew it, they do it time & time again. if the general public wasnt so lazy (to shop around) & cheap Dell would have no customers.

Anybody notice that they seem to be using the intel mini-card SSD (which plugs into mini pci-e).

While that might make it possible to upgrade the SSD (easier), the performance for that intel SSD is supposed to be pretty bad (35MB/s read, 10MB/s write).
So how can you hack that and put a faster SSD in there?

“I’d be surprised if they kept that rumor where the starting price would be $299 (if anything that’s the ubuntu version with 4GB SSD)”

So then…the starting price would be for the starter system? Sounds about right

I’d be surprised if they kept that rumor where the starting price would be $299 (if anything that’s the ubuntu version with 4GB SSD)

Hopefully the keyboard looks as promising as it is on the picture and for them to cut out F1-F12 keys, better pay off.