anonymous (no@spam.com) on 10/8/09 wrote:
---------------------------
>>OK, let's see if I can. You wrote: "Enough people here have made suggestions to
>>check amazon, and I'm pretty confident they are right. If you have proof otherwise, by all means..."
>>
>>Let's check netbooks with Z530 Atom, as was suggested.
>>http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=netbook+Atom+Z530&x=0&y=0
>>
>>We see 27 items, all from Dell.
>
>Add "-Dell" to the search terms. Unfortunately Amazon's
>search sort of refuses to be nice -- it gives me several
>groups of results, each with at least one of the search
>terms removed.
>
>>I guess Z Atoms must be such a crap noone seems to want them besides Dell. ;-)
>
>http://www.google.com/products?q=Netbook+Atom+Z530+-Dell&scoring=p&price1=50&price2=2000
>>
>
>That shows me MSI and Sony.

OK, Sony's cheapest Z machine is listed at $830, but clicking the link says it's not available.

MSI's Z530 nb is $350 (and it's the only offer on amazon), whereas their N270-based models start at $279 (U100 w/ shipping) with 15 offers <$300.
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=MSI+Wind+U100&cid=3584434956568009438&sa=button#scoring=tp

Actually, it appears through various deals and hot sales one can get an U100 for much less, e.g. for $180 as a part of $300 purchase.
http://www.google.com/products?q=MSI+Wind+U100&scoring=p&lnk=pruser&price1=150&price2=

Besides, Z530 (1.6 GHz, 2 W) is the only Z Atom MSI offers in their models and compared to N270-based U100, U110 doesn't seem to feature bigger anything. Sure, battery life will be higher, but "over 14 hours" as Amazon's ad says? Is that with LCD constantly on?

So, with Z Atoms, we have a few companies offering some models, but for N270, there are over a hundred items under $300 mark: Acer, hp, Dell, Asus, Lenovo, Gateway, OCZ, Hannspree..., starting at $201 for a new Acer with 8-gig SSD.
http://www.google.com/products?q=Atom+N270&scoring=p

That, in my opinion, shows very clearly there's a frigging huge difference when it comes to availability.