A SUB notebook for a notebook price. What on earth is the idea here. Why can we not buy a celeron laptop for 150 quid. Ah! I know. It's because the marketing/price model has been manipulated by adding a range of super pricey laptop alternatives.

Why not have sub-notebook 100 - 200 quid

Entry level laptop 250 - 350 quid

Expensive laptop 350+

Silly silly silly.

Is that because its actually a 10 inch laptop with an 8.9 inch screen?

Marketing will say anything to make you think its better.

The main thing about the original Eee was that, at £179, it was so cheap you could justify buying one just to read email and browse on the move. Even ASUS seem to have slightly lost the plot as they push the spec and the price up towards regular laptop levels. This MSI thing is just a not especially cheap, really low-spec laptop - what is the point?

Mind you Expansys aren't exactly the cheapest place around, so maybe we'll see some more sensible pricing elsewhere.

Oh do I not like that!

As other have said, the point of these is to make them small and cheap. At over £230ish you may as well get a better spec'd 15.4in notebook. Talk about missing the point.

...I agree with posters above, I thought the idea of these things was to be cheap and cheerful. I could swallow 199 quid for one but 320 for something just to check my email, do a bit of surfing and read doco's in bed is just a bit wrong. The manufacturers of these things have completely lost the spirit and their way.

Paris, because she'd prefer it to be 10"s rather than 8.9.

Absolutely...

Basically your cheap "entry level" laptop is now going to be an eee pc clone..or as they are starting to be called "craptops"...watch and see.

The Eee pc was a loss leader designed to see whether the western market would actually buy a computer that was, more or less, similar to one designed to give to african kids so they could trade it for a cow.

Once you bit in large numbers - due mainly to hype, the days of manufs chucking out cheap real laptops were numbered - at least in their eyes.

It was better for them to make the screen slighty bigger, add windows and charge £350 again...at least that's what they are hoping, but I think the spell has broken.

When the folk making laughably daft comments like "£179...it was so cheap to read email" aren't going to pony for one of these you know the manufs have raised the price too quickly....3 or 4 more loss leader models and they'd probably have done it.

If all else fails MSI could always say to the African kids "ok, you've had the cow for a few weeks, but it's not producing milk and you've no horseradish so you can't eat it. Why not try the craptop again? Ours is white look..."

Don't forget this has an 80gb HDD and a 1.6ghz CPU, so I think the price is pretty reasonable.

I really want to know what the battery life is like - if it's better than the EEE, I will be getting one.