The pricing game in the cheap notebook category getting rather silly. I’m seeing a lot of ‘tricks’ being used that will make it very difficult for consumers to sort the wheat from the chaff. The low-end Alpha 400 from Bestlink, a RISC-based Eee-a-like is another example. I’m not going to spend any time reporting details of the device (see LinuxDevices for that) or discuss whether it’s a good choice or not but I will report exactly what came into my mind when I read the news about it. Devices like these are nothing much more than smartphones running Linux and placed in notebook casings. I sound very negative when saying that but it shouldn’t be taken that way because while current solutions don’t provide enough oomph to give most users a serious alternative to a full notebook PC, they do show that we are moving to a point where the smartphone could be the only processing device you need. The idea of a smartphone running inside a notebook form factor really is a trick that needs to be observed. [Analysis after the break.]

Read the full story