HANDS ON GUIDE

9 - Even cheaper models

A netbook to suit anyone's wallet

When Asus first announced the EeePC, they said it would cost a mere $200 (£100). Although it wasn’t this price on release, netbooks are still relatively cheap. In the future, low-end netbooks could easily enter a very low price bracket. The One Laptop Per Child project, and others like it, have aimed for $100 (£50) a laptop. It may be some time before we see netbooks such as the EeePC reaching prices as low as those, although the EeePC started a trend.

We aren't expecting a new, cheaper model of EeePC to be released with all our suggested extras. Instead, we'd settle for multiple versions at different price points - ultra-cheap, or ultra-useful.

It’s a sign of how inexpensive computing has become – and in the future, we hope to see new generations of EeePC sold at even lower prices. One of the appeals of the netbook is the fact that it doesn't cost as much as a traditional laptop. Without the reduced price tag, it becomes harder to convince people they're a genuine alternative to a full sized laptop, some of which can be found at such a low price, there's less than £75 difference between them.

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