I've been looking at some of the new ultra portables coming along with interest. I have for a while been interested in getting a nice portable laptop for doing stuff on the move that doesn't require me to take out a second mortgage or sell some of my organs on the black market.
So I have been keeping an excited eye on Asus's new eeepc and the like. While exploring the alternatives I spotted that Packard Bell were about to get in on the action with the Easy Note XS a similar sort of thing to the eeepc but with a hard disk and windows. The RRP for the unit was £349 in the original press releases and it is retailing across the channel in Europe at 599 euros. Something in the realms of affordable it's maybe 100 quid more than the eeepc but it does have some nice advantages so it was tempting.
So today I found that pc world is going to be the sole UK distributor for the PB device and have put a price tag of 499 quid on it, a 150 quid mark up over the original RRP (It was at one point going to be 599 but they stepped back from that and the RRP has vanished from the Packard bell site presumable after a lot of annoyed customers emailed PC World).
So what could have been a tempting device has become a ridiculously expensive bit of kit only a fool would buy, and as we know there are enough fools to keep the likes of PC world in business. While a mark up is expected of someone like PC world a 150 quid mark up is a bit steep. Especially when you consider that you can buy from them something like the advent-8212 a significantly more powerful machine for 50 quid more.
Why is it that we always seem to get shafted when it comes to price, almost always paying dollar for pound on high tech kit despite dollars being worth less than used toilet paper these days.
Just by being greedy PC World have lost a potential sale and the choice of toys is now a one horse race.