Nokia has announced that the Booklet 3G will be available from German wireless carrier O2 on October 22nd. The price? €249 or about $365 US. Of course, you’ll need to sign up for 2-year service contract to get that price, at €20 to €25 per month.

The Booklet 3G is Nokia’s first netbook. It includes WiFi, a 3G modem, Bluetooth, and GPS. And it runs Windows 7, which explains why it’s launching in Germany on the same day that Microsoft is launching Windows 7.

We’ve been hearing for a while now that customers that want to pick up a netbook without a wireless subsidy would have to pay close to $800. But it looks likely that the unlocked version of the Booklet 3G will be available in the US for $600 from Best Buy. And if the German pricing is anything to go by, it could be a whole lot cheaper if and when US wireless carriers begin to offer the netbook at a subsidized price.

via Engadget

With netbooks and nettops pulling overall prices for personal computers down, Toshiba president Norio Sasaki says the company plans to launch several new PCs that will cost $599 or less.

It’s not clear at the moment whether these new machines will be netbooks along the lines of the Toshiba Mini NB205 or just low cost laptops. But Sasaki’s comments provide more evidence that netbooks have changed the way consumers and computer companies are thinking about PC prices and features.

One of the reasons netbooks are so popular is that they generally cost less than fuller featured laptops. But in addition to driving down the average price of computers, netbooks have also led consumers to change the way they think about the value of computers… and that’s led manufacturers to drop the prices of higher end computer as well.

At a recent conference, Creative Strategies president Tim Bajarin gave a presentation on the mobile device landscape. And he suggested that there’s a so-called “netbook effect” on the industry, which will make it difficult, if not impossible, for computer makers to charge $1000 for laptops in the future. 

Now to be fair, I don’t think we’re talking about all laptops here. Some consumers will be willing to pay more for specialty devices like computers with high end graphics and gaming capabilities, or for Macs. But when a $300 netbook can run Windows XP or Windows 7 and most of the applications you need to use every day, it’s hard to justify spending more than $900 on a larger, heavier laptop just because it has a faster processor or larger screen which you may not need. 

Still, Bajarin states what everybody following this industry already knows: Laptop makers are less than happy with the low profit margins on netbooks and are starting to push out higher priced machines with larger screens, faster processors, and other features which could convince consumers to pay $600 to $1000 instead of $200 to $500. 

What do you think? Do you need a faster, more powerful machine? Or if you were looking for a laptop with a larger keyboard and display than the typical netbook, would you rather pay $500 or less and stick with a relatively slow CPU like and Intel Atom or VIA Nano?

You can watch a video of Bajarin’s presentation after the break.

via Asus Eee Hacks

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Astute readers may have noticed that I’ve been running a series of polls as part of the Liliputing Birthday Bash contests. I find that it’s often easier to get people to respond to a poll than to leave comments on a blog, so while I already had a sense of what the most vocal Liliputing readers thought about some of these topics, it’s interesting to see how a larger group responds.

So without further ado, here are the results so far. When I asked what the best size for a netbook display was, you overwhelmingly picked 10.2 inches:

When I asked how much money was too much for a netbook, there was no clear winner. A handful of respondents don’t want to pay more than $300. But it seems a fair number of you are willing to pay $400 or $500. Some of you are even willing to pay up to $600, although with most netbooks selling for much less than that, I assume you’ll want some nifty features like high resolution displays, touchscreens, or maybe even GPS devices or TV tuners to go with that higher price tag.

Thanks for playing, and keep checking out the Liliputing Birthday Bash landing page for information about upcoming contests.

The official line from Asus is that the upcoming Eee PC 1004DN (you know, the first Eee PC with an optical disc drive), won’t be released in the US. Instead it will be made available in Asia and other markets first. But a recent FCC filing makes me suspect Asus is at least thinking about bringing the 1004DN stateside.

In the meantime, PC Authority in Australia is one of the first news organizations to get its hands on this new mini-laptop. In a pre-review article, PC Authority says the Eee PC 1004DN has a good keyboard, a touchpad that’s less responsive than those found on many other netbooks, and a professional looking chassis (in addition to a fingerprint scanner, ExpressCard slot, DVD drive, and other goodies).

But the biggest news is the price. PC Authority has the first price I’ve seen for a netbook so far. And the news isn’t great for those of you who had been hoping Asus would offer this netbook dirt cheap. The suggested retail prices is $1300 AUD, which is about $991 US. Before y0u give up on the 1004DN though, you should know that computers generally cost more in Australia. For instance, the Asus Eee PC 1000HE first launched in the US for $374, while it cost $899 AUD, or the equivalent of about $637 US. 

If Asus follows a similar pricing scheme with the 1004DN, it could sell for $600 or less if and when it hits the US. That might be a lot of money for a typical netbook, but the Eee PC 1004DN isn’t exactly a typical netbook.

There must be a run on red paint or something. Because Lenovo had decided to drop the price of the white version of the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook to $399. But the company is still charging $439 for the red model.

If you visit the Lenovo order page right now, red and white are the only available options. And the laptops are identical in all respects but color. Interestingly, you can pick up a pink version from CompUSA for $429, the same price CompUSA charges for the S10 in any color.

You can find a list of other retailers that are selling the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 in the Liliputing Forums. No one has a better price than $399, but if you enter the code 704919 when ordering from Lenovo, you can shave 5% off the purchase price.

When the Samsung NC10 was first announced a few weeks ago, Samsung said the laptop would cost £329, or about $590 US. Now it looks like Samsung could be preparing to slash the price to £299, or about $530 US. It also looks like the netbook will come with a 160GB hard drive standard, not the 80GB HDD we’d originally been expecting.

It’s not clear at this point whether the Samsung NC10 will be available in the US or not. But if it does hit the States, odds are it will be priced lower still. Computers tend to cost a bit more in the UK than the US.

via Engadget

While AMD’s marketing department is busy making up excuses for why the company is staying out of the netbook game, OEM PC maker Quanta is being a bit more honest. Quanta does make netbooks. In fact, the company shipped 3.1 million notebooks in August, which is about 200,000 more computers than during the same month last year — and many of them were netbooks.

But you know what? Quanta brought in less money this year than last. DigiTimes reports Quanta saw an 18.5% drop in revenue from the same month in 2007. That’s because netbooks are typically cheaper than larger notebooks and have lower profit margins.

While consumers like me are happily watching the netbook price wars, the lower companies like Acer and Asus drop their netbook prices, the less revenue companies like Quanta will be seeing. And that could make the whole netbook business a little less attractive for equipment makers.

Quanta manufactures the Acer Aspire One laptop and is also the company behind the upcoming Lenovo IdeaPad S10. At least it will be if the S10 is ever released. Oh, and there’s one more interesting tidbit buried in the DigiTimes article – apparently Quanta will also be making a netbook for Sony soon.

As MobilitySite points out, there’s probably no reason to expect the netbook craze to put Quanta out of business just yet. Quanta is also the manufacturer of the Apple iPhone.

The Intel Atom CPU may be designed to provide decent performance at a low price, while using less power than similar chips. But it turns out the “low price” part of that equation is a bit muddy. Network World reports that the desktop version of the Atom, the N230, costs $29, while the N270 laptop version costs $44. While both are pretty cheap by CPU standards, you’re paying a premium to get pretty much the same performance out of the laptop version.

What makes the laptop chip more than 30% more expensive than the desktop chip? Heat. There’s more room in a desktop, even a tiny desktop like the Eee Box than in most laptops. And that means you have more room for fans and other cooling systems to keep the computer from overheating. So you can build cheaper parts into the processor. The inside of a laptop, on the other hand, is a pretty crowded place. So the Atom N270 would overheat if Intel didn’t include some slighlty pricier components to help keep things cool.

In the grand scheme of things, a $15 price difference might not seem like a big deal. But when laptop makers are selling mini-notebooks for as cheap as $300, every dollar counts. The New York Times has an article this morning suggesting that many PC manufacturers are less than pleased that the netbook market segment is doing so well. On the one hand, tens of millions of tiny laptops are expected to sell this year. On the other hand, since the prices are low, so are the profit margins.