Compal Recieves Nokia Order for 100K Booklets

News
By Jane McEntegart
published

Nokia has put in an order for 100,000 Booklet 3G computers with Compal, with the shipment to be delivered before the end of 2009.

Digitimes today reports that Compal Electronics has received an order for 100,000 netbooks from Nokia. Nokia detailed its Booklet 3G at Nokia World, Stuttgart yesterday morning and to everyone's surprise the device is priced at over $810. While this price tag is expected to be heavily subsidized by carriers, it hasn't stopped people from declaring that the device is much too expensive for a netbook.

According to Digitimes, Nokia's price point aims to avoid stiff competition presented by the already very crowded netbook space. How much would you pay for the device? Peep the specs below and let us know what you think it's worth.

*Image Credit: Digitimes

Jane McEntegart
10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ubernoobie
    I wonder how many will be sold....hmm
    Reply
  • tpi2007
    It doesn't even have a 5400 rpm hard drive! 4200 rpm ? 800 $ ? Are they serious ?

    I would never buy something like this for the asked price, even if it is subsidized - which I doubt - I already read somewhere else carriers find it difficult to subsidize because Nokia is going to be offering it's own services.

    It does have a Z530 at 1.6 instead of a Z520 at 1.3, but even that isn't enough. The GMA 500 is inferior in performance to the 950 and the other netbook makers are already achieving 10 hours of battery life with the new N280, so what's the point in buying this just for 12 hours of battery life compared to 10 ?

    Come on! I have a nokia phone, but they're entering a saturated market with established players. Asus, Acer, MSI and even Toshiba with the new NB200 all make fine netbooks - and fine looking too - for a lot less cash.

    Sure it has HDMI and GPS, but it this really worth having in a netbook ? What kind of content would you have on a netbook that would require/benefit being transmitted over hdmi instead of VGA ? Audio ? Sure, but is this worth the asking price ?

    And GPS ? Are you going to be looking at the screen in the drivers seat while driving ? Accident waiting to happen. I can understand it in a phone, which can double as a small screen gps inside a car if you stick it into an adapter on the windshield, and take it with you while walking, but what's the point of having it in a netbook ?

    I would rather connect my cell phone with gps via bluethooth to the Netbook for the times when I need GPS on a bigger screen. For that price I could actually buy a phone with gps AND a Netbook!
    Reply
  • cekasone
    Putting the minor perks aside like HDMI out, higher resolution screen, bigger battery and Windows 7. I would pay 300 bucks just as I would any other netbook out there.
    Reply
  • r0x0r
    $810 and not even ion. Pfft
    Reply
  • cinergy
    Macs cost like hell and people still buy them...
    Reply
  • Shadow703793
    $810 for a Netbook!!?!???? No thanks, I'll just buy a decent laptop.
    Reply
  • psh...software can make or break most of these offerings...if nokia actually invests money in good software but seeing as they are only going to sell 100k I doubt it'll matter. they should of spent more on arm chips and ssd and come out with a more powerful version of the always innovating tablet. they could spend money developing software...albeit if they go the x86 route they should have spent the extra MS tax and used non laptop components. I assume they're profit will come from services making a better laptop would have been worth it.
    I wish they had a low power text display hybrid like the OLPC...hardware wise it doesn't seem much better from netbook in fact perf-wise it's worse.
    Reply
  • syslog2000
    If it costs $400 or less after carrier subsidy, our customers would buy them all day long (we make mobile software for transportation, healthcare and some other industries for job dispatch, gps tracking, custom forms etc). People are asking for a GPS capable netbook, and will easily pay $300 to $400 for it.
    Reply
  • falchard
    $200 no more. Intel Atoms are really crappy processors.
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    falchard$200 no more. Intel Atoms are really crappy processors.
    There innocent cheap efficent processors with a "really crappy" chipset/platform - thats more true

    Nvidia ion - sorry but dont trust nvidia atm after seeing so many duds

    $810 - might be on some kind of phone plan or some bundle etc so you never know what nokia might be able to do, keep in mind some "cheap" phone handsets will cost you easily $500 on some plans and if you look at the iphone this thing is rather cheap concidering what i "can" do.

    But still if you were to buy it retail that price is a joke
    Reply