Notebook Hunter

Just like the uniformity of their components, netbooks tend to come with drearily similar pricing. For under AU$400 these days you tend to get a netbook powered by an Intel Atom N270 CPU that's two generations old, 1 GB of RAM, a 160 GB hard disk and Windows XP. Add another hundred dollars and you get one with an N280 or new model N450 processor, 1GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive plus Windows 7 Starter. You never get an N450 processor, 2GBs of RAM and 250 GBs of hard disk for under $500. But this is exactly the deal being offered by  Pioneer Computers on its Dreambook Lite M81 netbook, which can be had for $497 with Windows XP Home (or $507 with Windows 7 Starter). Pioneer Computers builds to order, so to get this deal, you have to go to Pioneer's netbook configurator and spec up the base M81 to the above configuration and then order it. What actually makes this deal stand out in terms of value is that you're really getting a 250 GB hard drive for the same price as a 160 GB one.

To get the deal, go to the Pioneer Computers configurator page for the DreamBook Lite M81 and fill out the order details.