Written by tjchan on Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Sprint Releases First EVDO Netbook

Sprint is pleased to announce the first EVDO netbook. With a price of $199 after a $100 rebate with a 2 year contract at $60 a month for 5GB of bandwidth, what you get is a Dell Mini 10 featuring:

10.1-inch 1024 x 600 display
Intel Atom Z520 1.33GHz processor
1GB of RAM
160GB hard-drive
B/G Wireless
Intel GMA500 graphics

Good deal or a bad deal? In my personal opinion, I’d say it’s a bad deal. Dell currently sells just the netbook for $350. Considering that I have to shell out $300 up front is crazy not to mention how much I don’t like mail in rebates due to the fact of sales tax on the original amount. I’d rather buy a netbook from Micro Center for say $200 for a refurbished HP Mini (which I like so much more than the Dell in terms of design) and then just get a USB aircard with the 2 year contract for free. So I’ve spent the same amount but I now have a USB device where I can move from computer to computer should my netbook go haywire or runs into problems where it will be with the manufacturer for about 2 weeks for warranty repair. Yes, certain things should not be integrated. And I find it laughable that Sprint would require one to have such a high out of pocket cost when AT&T provides a 3G equivalent with an out of pocket cost of $50 less.

Source: SlashGear