Asus N10 Netbook: $849 Pre-Order

So remember when we were talking about the Asus N10 netbook the other day? And also a few days before that? It’s amazing how much coverage this thing is getting, but when you roll in the Mercedes or BMW or what have you of the netbook world you can expect to get a little more coverage on the blogs than when some no-name company you’ve never heard of announces a netbook tablet. Regardless, it would appear that at least one merchant has the Asus N10 netbook available for pre-order, so who?

Well, JR of course. They’ve listed the top-of-the-line Asus N10 netbook at pretty much the price we were speculating a few days ago. Loaded to the gills with all sorts of things you’d normally see in a comparably priced notebook, this netbook comes with all sorts of goodies that feel a little out of place on a netbook, and for the price, you could buy a slightly smaller Apple MacBook and get four times the computer.

Ok, so obviously the MacBook would be three inches larger than the Asus N10 netbook, and it’d also weigh a couple of pounds more, but really, why bother? Haven’t we been down this road already where we talked about half the point of the netbook is that it’s affordable. I, and I’m guessing a lot of other people, wouldn’t look at $849 and call that “affordable” when you compare it to standard notebooks out there.

But, that’s what Asus has essentially priced their machine at. It’s hard to say if it’ll stay at this price considering how many of the Eees quickly dropped in price. Of course, there’ll also be other models available (soon?) with fewer features, but then you’re no longer getting the Mercedes/BMW of netbooks and you’re just getting the Toyota Avalon. Still, if you have more than $800 to spend on a netbook and want a less useful (but more portable) computer than something like a MacBook, hey, it’s your money.

I’ll stick with my Acer Aspire One netbook for the time being, you know?