Asus Eee PC X101 MeeGo netbook now available for $199 and up

The Asus Eee PC X101 is a 10 inch netbook that may just have the lowest starting price of any laptop ever produced. While plenty of older netbooks start $300 and then see price drop after price drop until they hit $200, the X101 is a brand new machine that Asus promised would cost just $199.99 at launch.

Now that it’s available for purchase in the US, it looks like the price might vary a bit depending on where you shop. ExcaliberPC has the Eee PC X101 for $199, but CDW is taking orders for $209.99, while the netbook is available for pre-order from Amazon for $226.99.

In order to keep costs down, the Eee PC X101 has a 3 cell, 28Whr battery, just 8GB of flash storage, and a 1.33 GHz Intel Atom N435 single core processor. It also runs MeeGo, a Linux-based operating system designed for netbooks, smartphones, and other mobile devices.

This means Asus doesn’t have to pay a license fee to Microsoft for Windows software, but it also means that there may not be many apps available. Fortunately you can probably install Ubuntu, Fedora, or another Linux distribution if you’re looking for a more standard laptop experience.

The mini-laptop has a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, 1GB of memory (upgradeable to 2GB), 802.11b/g/n WiFi, and a VGA camera. It measures 10.3″ x 7.1″ x 0.7″ and weighs about 2 pounds.