That's excellent - you looked at a source of hard data that isn't beholden to Nokia, well done!

Otoh, if you analyze this, it isn't necessarily so great. Product #1-#5 in such rankings normally get several orders of magnitude more sales than those at #20-#30. In this case, "Computer & PC Hardware" shows the Eee at #3. And #6. And #11, #12, and #17. So if you really believe that a #28 position relates to 500K units, then we should be seeing Eee's almost as often as Coca Cola cans. (Always do sanity checks like this on your data sources when you can.)

You have to remember in looking at Amazon figures that people use it as a way of getting hold of hard to get stuff, just like ebay. A poorly distributed product will look unnaturally great on Amazon, because they will get a large percentage of its sales. But still a nice try at product intelligence.

Another good tool to use is Froogle - see how many places sell a product, then watch the ones that show inventory. You have to weight by various factors to do with outlet size and specialization, so you get a very fuzzy answer, but this is a lot better than listening to what people want you to believe for their own purposes. Doing this got me an estimate of a few thousand Nit's a year sold in the UK. I took this seriously because I know a business with a product coming out that would be a good match for the Nit, and if it was really a relatively untapped 500K unit market, it would be worth porting it - they'd make several 100K for a few 10K's effort. But the real economics look very difernet - they'd do well to break even on the porting cost, and there would be no chance of a profit worth the hassle of an extra SKU. I will tell them to check out the Eee though.

I like the Nit, I can imagine liking it much more with the next OS, if there is one, but I can't believe that 500K people bought one.