I was a little shocked when I first saw the Best Buy Sunday ad flier — I thought that there had [...]]]>

Best Buy is offering Sprint bundle deal offering a netbook for 99 cents (yes, under a dollar) with a two year contract commitment. Dan Hesse, are you crazy, or crazy like a fox?

I was a little shocked when I first saw the Best Buy Sunday ad flier — I thought that there had been a mistake on the price, especially since AT&T and Verizon wanted a couple hundred dollars AND a two year commitment for the same machine — a Compaq Mini 110c-1040DX netbook with embedded 3G connectivity and listing for $389 without a contract.

The actual netbook ain’t all that great actually; given  it has a 10.1 inch screen and only a 3 cell battery, it is a little pricey for what you get with the exception of the built-in connectivity.

So how does Sprint manage to eat $200 relative to AT&T and Verizon? Subsidy deals are no big deal in the cellular industry, and the 99 cent notebook seems to be Sprint’s latest gambit to grab market share.

Compare $390 list for the netbook to the list price of the spankin’ new Palm Pre – $850.  The price drops to $200 after you buy at Best Buy and sign a two year contract with Sprint so the delta is $650 or so if everyone is paying list price. The Samsung Instinct, listed at $600, goes down to $100 after a two year contract, so there’s $500 of magic math difference.

Some phones are already effectively “free,” so seeing a netbook at “free” in exchange for a two year commitment isn’t surprising.

Be interesting to see if AT&T or Verizon have to respond.  Will they go 99 cents, $99 dollars, or $149.99?

A Verizon two year data plan will [...]]]>

Verizon Wireless is rolling out its 3G netbook bundle, but does it make financial sense? On Sunday, you will be able to purchase an HP Mini 1151NR Netbook for only $199.99 after a $50 dollar mail-in rebate in combination with a two year Verizon Wireless service agreement.

A Verizon two year data plan will cost $40 a month with a whopping 250 MB of downloading per month. Overage charges after that are 10 cents per megabyte.  Going up to $60 give you a 5 GB cap and only 5 cents per megabyte for overage; down from 25 cents per megabyte.

Occasional users get a $15 a day “Mobile Broadband DayPass” for $15, giving users 24 hour access to the Internet for any Verizon-certified mobile device purchased at full retail price without a monthly service plan.  If I used 3G for less than three days a month, this might make sense; it also sounds like a Xerox out of Sprint/ClearWire’s WiMAX playbook.  But then you have to factor in the retail list price through Verizon for the HP netbook of $519.99, so the payback on that is…not worth the time to pull up the Excel spreadsheet to say “Ugh!”

I’ve been running around with an Acer Aspire One netbook since the fall (XP/hard drive load, list price $350 at Best Buy when purchased, now around $300 through Walmart) and simply tethering it (Phone as modem) through a USB connection to my Sprint phone (PAM plan around $40/month with 5GB cap, if memory serves; need to check my phone bill).

The HP netbook has a bigger screen (10.1 inches vs. 8.9 for the Aspire), but otherwise they come up pretty equal.

If you were a heavy 3G CDMA user/traveler, this might be your thing, especially if you didn’t want to dork around with WiFi roaming and irregularities – that’s why I went 3G a couple of year ago.  I suspect the “fleet”/business offerings on this product are going to be where Verizon Wireless really makes some cash. Average user?  Not so much.

Sourcing CNet blog.