A few days ago an ad leaked out suggesting that Radio Shack and AT&T would soon be offering a subsidized Acer Aspire One netbook for just $99.99 when you sign up for a 2 year service plan. Now the two companies have gone and made it official.
While  Dell and HP both offer customers the option of configuring netbooks with a 3G broadband modem, you have to pay extra for that option and sign up for a service plan to activate your wireless service. But Acer, AT&T and Radio Shack are the first companies to offer a subsidized netbook in the US.Â
Keep in mind, AT&T will charge you $60 per month for broadband wireless service, which means this $100 laptop will actually cost you more than $1500 over the course of two years. The Radio Shack offer is good from December 14th through December 24th, and includes a black Aspire One model with a 160GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, Windows XP, and a built in 3G modem.
You can read more about the Acer Aspire One in the Liliputing Product Database.
steve,
In fairness, the netbook includes a 3G modem, so it’s inevitably going to cost a little more without a plan. Probably not $200+, but that’s some of the price hike anyway.
But hey, you can buy just the netbook without the plan too.
Its only… $499. Which is about 210$ than I paid for my Acer One about a month ago.
I think I now understand why Radio Shack doesnt exist in Canada anymore… never bought anything more than some wires or plugs there, the electronics prices were always nuts.
I’m assuming this is going to come with the 6 cell battery but I haven’t seen a confirmation of it anywhere. I really wish they would tell us.
I wonder what they would do with this and existing AT&T customers….I may have to go and find out. I already have an AspireOne but of course it doesn’t have a cellular card in it. I also am already an AT&T customer (and as about to pull the trigger on an iPhone). Verrrrry interesting, this.