Um freakin' awesome:

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/0...ag-along-with/

Qualcomm went and blurted off news about a $299 machine that will run Windows Mobile 7 on its Snapdragon mobile chip set. Qualcomm's senior veep Luis Pineda boasted that the machine will run WinMo7 and is more efficient than its competitors from the likes of Intel, AMD, and Via. When pressed, he wouldn't give up any additional hardware specs, but he promises a "big presence in Snapdragon-based devices at CES 2009".

NICE! 4 more chars...

If only it wasn't running a flavor of Windows...

Not only Windoze, but also "blurted off news about a $299 machine".
Same time last year the prices of the EEEPC etc were supposed to be cheap, and elevated to expensive by time of intro.

That's exactly what I was thinking too.

The EEE PC was supposed to launch for $199, which would have been absolutely revolutionary.

By the time it hit the shops though, the specs were severely reduced and the price was severely inflated. Here in Europe it costs nearer $450 for the cheapest model, and even in America I believe it starts at $300 plus taxes.

Either Asus completely miscalculated their manufacturing costs, or else they upped the price because of the sudden interest in their product. The trouble is, for a lot of people the interest was based entirely around the low price, so raising the price destroyed one of the main selling points.

This wiki page on how "easy" it was to mod the EEEPC was the only thing that interested me the Asus after they raised the price so much:

http://beta.ivancover.com/wiki/index...ernal_Upgrades

I'm still wondering whether some of these mods would be possible with my N810

My current dream mods are:

1) port for external GPS antenna (just an extension of the internal antenna)

2) blackberry-esque scrollwheen in the side of the screen (I actually think this might be easy to do, on the software side at least)

3) Larger internal flash to replace the 2gb one. (Impossible I know but hey, we can dream :P )

@krisse: Looking at how they fast the products fly off the shelves even at current prices, it seems that Asus didn't miscalculate on the selling price. They still can reduce the price later to clear the remaining stock..

Actually, I think #3 is the easiest one; if you can get the chip off, and solder some ultra-fine wires in it's place, you chould be able to hook up a regular SD slot... On the non-WiMAX, at least, you can probably find room inside, if you want to permanently mount, say, a 16 GBer.

my thoughts exactly... and wm is a particularly disgusting flavor of windows.

Also, once a device gets that big, is it unreasonable to expect a full blown OS?
Edit: nm, it looks exactly like the n810... laptop my ***

Well, yeah; that's why I have a Nokia IT; they're in the $299 range, and have a full-blown OS, with a restricted top layer for "nice" mobile device behavior. WM, on the other had, is different underneath, so it's a much more serious restriction; and they don't
come out appreciably cheaper.

It's this sort of thing that makes one appreciate the ITs...