Compaq Airlife 100 exclusively available to Telefónica customers for 229 euros in May
By Joanna Stern 
posted April 28th 2010 1:43PM
posted April 28th 2010 1:43PM
We just had a feeling that the Compaq Airlife 100 would be the first smartbook to ship when we caught wind of its official spec page last week, and now our Spanish counterparts are reporting that the Android-running clamshell will be exclusively available through Telefonica Movistar in mid-May. The carrier is also finally revealing a price -- the Snapdragon smartbook will set Spaniards back 229 euros and that doesn't even include the accompanying 48 euros a month Internet Maxi plan (insert iPad joke here). We are told there's also a 39 euro Internet Plus plan, but that requires you to shell out 299 euros for the little laptop. Seems to be a bit more expensive than we originally thought, considering you can get a more powerful netbook for less than 199 euros these days, but we will see how this whole smartbook thing pans out soon enough. As for us Americans, HP recently told us there are no plans to bring the Airlife 100 stateside.
Android fragmentation continues...
@WYGUY Indeed Android is a nightmare for developers. If you wish to develop and app for Android you not only have to consider the OS version but also the hardware specs.
@WYGUY I don't know, I think PC fragmentation is pretty bad as well. but it still doing very well. While no fragmentation is the best way, like all game consoles, but fragmentation isn't as bad at all. Developers just need to be more careful like what they're doing in PC and MAC.
@WYGUY Well seeing that the Ipad will most likely cost about €700 when it gets here this is actually pretty cheap. Yes the pricing for the net is a little high but seeing that you get better 3G connections here then in the states I really would not complain to much.
@1mc
PC development is not the same for many reasons, but if you really insist on comparing the two: try booting your PC in 320x480 and see how many of your applications are still usable. And that's applications using UI toolkits specifically designed for resizable windows and accurate pointing devices, imagine how well things scale using a toolkit designed for full-screen touch-based controls across all these resolutions. Or across 6 different OS versions with different feature sets, which were all released in a 2 year time frame.
Besides that, incompetent hardware and awkward or inconsistent UI's are among the biggest annoyances many people have with PC's, but at least it has always been like this so people accept it. If Android ends up being one big mess of applications that may or may not work with your particular device, things will be very bad for the OS.
@Drago Not really. Unless you want to do an app that relies heavily on graphics - like games, you don't need to care much. It doesn't mean Android is still to difficult to program due to fragmentation, only that hardware is by far not the biggest problem.
Also fragmentation is an inherent problem since there are so many different hardware platforms Android can run on. You cannot argument fragmentation is much less a problem on the iPhone since there is only the iPhone and a bigger iPhone (a.k.a. iPad) to run those apps on. It's like comparing a swiss army knive to a normal knive just by looking at the weight. Sure the normal knive will win but then the comparison wasn't fair.
@Drago
but at least you dont have to buy an SDK for over 600 dollars and possibly a mac desktop/laptop for God knows what price.... its not that big a deal so stop being a douche... fan boy rhetoric is all you spew from what can be considered your new anal sphincter ...
in other words stop talking sh*t
Maxi Plan!
for when your data flow is too heavy for just an iPad!
.....was that bad enough?
@yulebellow Hah, that was awesome. And gross.
€229 isn't that bad for this device.. but that should be the price without a plan.
That sounds obscenely expensive. It should be around 230 Euros WITHOUT a monthly data plan.
It doesn't say how long you are locked into this contract, but say it's for 2 years. That means that this ~$300 netbook is going to end up costing you about $1800 (converted to USD). Ridiculous.
People don't all want the same hardware. Since when have developers expected to be able to develop software for a single totally uniform platform?
(reply to first comment)
Ditto. Ridiculous price. If this is what Android/Chrome OS netbooks are going to be priced at they'll be dead before they start. How about $199 for a non-3G model without a contract. At that price they *might* be able to sell the product and establish their market independent of regular old netbooks. Above that? Forget it. The fact that PCs are a pain or Android has an app market or whatever won't factor into it.
@Fanfoot Everything cost more in Europe.
"HP recently told us there are no plans to bring the Airlife 100 stateside."
Probably because HP has not come up with dozens of bloatware for Android to be pre-installed on the thing, just for US customers.