US wireless carrier Sprint has started offering the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 at a subsidized price. To avail of this offer, customers have to sign up for a 2-year Sprint Mobile Broadband service plan. The laptop will cost $199.99 with the 2 year service contrast. The Inspiron Mini 10 starts at around $300. The model available at the subsidized price also has an internal EV-Do modem.
The Inspiron Mini 10 can now be purchased at the subsidized rate from stores in Minneapolis and St. Paul. It is not yet known when the offer will be available in other parts of the country.
Meanwhile, it seems Verizon also has plans to add a low-cost netbook to its 3G lineup. Unofficial sources claim that Verizon may soon start offering the Sony Vaio P at a subsidized price. If these rumors are indeed true the netbook could be available for as little as $299.99 with a long term wireless broadband contract.
Australian PC manufacturer Pioneer Computers is captivating preorders for notebooks based on an unreleased quad-core mobile processor from the house of Intel, saying the chips are extremely close to being obtainable. Intel's 2.53GHz quad-core Core 2 Extreme QX9300 processor is promoted as a A$1,449 (US$1,390) promote to Pioneer Computers' Dream Book Style 9008 notebook. Dazzling the chips expected location at the top end of Intel's mobile product line, the asking price of promote is more than the notebook's A$1,399 basic price. The quad-core chip is not short listed on Intel's very recent price tag and will be the company's 1st quad-core mobile chip that packs 12M bytes of on-chip cache, as per Pioneer.