Another question to ask…is the consumer forced to pay for the first month of service? That would add $60 to $99 Base + $175 ETF = $335

This is like the fallacious argument that the iPhone actually costs $2000 because of the two year contract… which is BS because *everyone* with a smartphone pays $2000 for a voice/data plan over two years, with or without a subsidy. And that monthly payment goes on forever until you wise up.

If you think like you get a discount on a netbook when you sign up for a mobile data plan, then you can realistically decide whether this Acer’s worth it to you.

You might consider amending the article to mention that specific data plan only comes with 5GB of bandwidth a month, so the cost should be factored to account for it. I can do 5GB just by websurfing for a few hours these days considering how much Flash banner crap I have to deal with – I don’t deal with it as it’s blocked, but your average Joe (not me, I assure you) doesn’t do such things, and their web browsing bandwidth is sucked down by Flash crap, ads, multimedia banners of various kinds, watching YouTube videos and such, etc.

When Sprint and other companies offered truly unlimited bandwidth on broadband wireless for $60 to $80 a month, that was worth it. Now, $60 a month for 5GB of measly bandwidth makes this a fairly lukewarm deal considering the lockdown to the 2 year contract.

I’d say save your money and get the Samsung NC-10, with nearly 8 hours of battery life, and check out the Wi-Fi spots where you’ll be moving around in. Far superior in almost all respects, and more cost effective in the long run.

True, but I am already paying them $50 a month for the data service so if I cancelled my current, or simply renew the contract if I can, then will still be cheaper than MSRP. BTW, the retail on this one is $499 not $349 as the non-WWAN ones are. So even paying the $50 a month for two months ($100 cause I get a work discount) the EFT $175 if I choose to cancel instead of cancelling the expired contract one, and the $99 for the netbook, still less than the $499 retail and only a few bucks more than what the NON-WWAN was going to cost me last month.

The main attractor to me in the deal is not having to tnkgrl an AAO to get integrated 3G. The blessings of AT&T using SIM cards makes the deal for me. I can move the $60 account around by moving the SIM card between XU870 and the AAO.

Heck I might even be able to pop the SIM out of my iPhone 3G and pop it in in a pinch (accidentally left SIM in XU870).

When I crunch the numbers I’m still getting a deal with an early out and return to my orange SIM. Plus no waiting for a 3G non-subsidy option to show up at Newegg or Amazon.

I’m going to be playing Garfield at the door of my local Radioshack this sunday waiting for them to shuffle in and open up.

I’ll be on pins and needles hoping for a six cell battery. Hopefully they toss that in to keep the battery life up with that HSPA power hog on board. :-)

THANK YOU!