AT&T now offering netbooks from $99 and up, data plans required

AT&T has begun, albeit on a limited basis, to offer netbooks — which are priced as low as $99. So far, they seem to only be available in around sixteen stores that are in the Atlanta and Philadelphia areas. They also all require a two-year agreement on either the 5GB DataConnect plan for $60-a-month or the 200MB DataConnect plan for $40-a-month. Both plans also include access to any of the “thousands” of AT&T wireless hotspots.

As for the netbooks (and mini notebooks) that are available, customers will be able to choose from an:

• Acer Aspire One featuring an 8.9-inch display, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, a 3-cell battery and is running Windows XP Home.
• Dell Mini 9 featuring an 8.9-inch display, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8GB hard drive, a 4-cell battery and is running Windows XP Home.
• Dell Mini 12 featuring a 12.1-inch display, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, a 4-cell battery and is running Windows XP Home.
• LG X110 featuring a 10-inch display, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 180GB hard drive, a 3-cell battery and is running Windows Vista Home Basic.
• Lenovo X200 featuring a 12.1-inch display, 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, a 4-cell battery and is running Windows Vista Home Basic.

It is important to also point out that the above mentioned prices are all AFTER a $100 mail-in-rebate. So just add a 100 bucks to the above number to find out how much you will be shelling out on the day of purchase. It should be interesting to see just how well these sell, personally I am not sold on the idea of having my DataConnect account tied to just one device. I would think it would be much smarter, and more convenient to have a netbook, mini-notebook or even a full-size notebook and have a separate USB dongle that I can use with any computer.

Product [AT&T] Via [Liliputing]