Acer Aspire One With 3G Arrives At Radio Shack

As suspected, Radio Shack announced it will be carrying the 3G-enabled “piano black” Acer Aspire One for the bargain basement price of $99.99–as long as you don’t mind the shackles of a 2-year, $60-a-month AT&T data plan. Mobile broadband capability is undoubtedly netbooks’ true calling, but, as Gizmodo points out, this pushes the price of the diminutive netbook to a whopping $1540 over two years. If you consider how much you pay over two years for your cell phone, it’s a pretty good deal considering the expanded functionality. Few would disagree that’s much easier to type an e-mail on a real keyboard. If you’re into saving money, ditch the cell phone and Skype your friends from the Aspire One instead. The 3G Aspire one is spec’d out much like a standard Aspire One: Atom N270 processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, Windows XP and 802.11b/g. This isn’t a bad deal if you’re in the market for a netbook with mobile broadband. Dell recently began offering its Inspiron Mini 9 with a $125 AT&T mobile broadband card and will give you a $120 Visa gift card when you activate a 2-year $60-a-month data plan, but there’s no discount on the netbook itself. Take them up on that offer and you’ll shell out $1,964 and have a gift card to give mom. HP’s Mini 1000 can be outfitted with a $199 mobile broadband card that works with both AT&T and Verizon, but doesn’t require a two-year commitment right off the bat, for a grand total of $614. If you sign up for the same AT&T plan the other netbooks offer, you’ll free yourself of $2,054. And all you’ll have to show for it is a 60GB HDD as it’s the only hard drive option available with the mobile broadband card.