Datawind’s unbeatable deal: netbook + free internet for $199

Datawind has previously been on our radar but dropped out until now. Brad over at liliputing got hold of them and they have moved their planned US launch date of their service to April 2010 at the earliest.

To review, the Ubisurfer (ubiquitous surfing, get it?)  from Datawind is a simple 7-incher that also comes with 30 hours of free EVDO internet per month, all for $199. That’s it, no monthly fees for a year, no data limits and you can get another year’s coverage for $49.

The downside is that the specs aren’t that spectacular but for a small netbook just for checking mail or reading RSS, this would do the trick. And while it might be slow, Datawind does give it a boost by serving websites indirectly from their own servers instead of connecting to them directly. Privacy issues aside, this does make browsing faster and will let you maximize that monthly limit to the hilt. And of course, flash and other streaming websites will be disabled but you can still use a WiFi connection for those.

They will also launching a pocket smartbook as well, pictured below, with a 640 x 240 screen and $249 with data plan included.

via liliputing