When the Asus eee PC first arrived on store shelves in the West it caught our attention for two reasons; it was very small, and it was very cheap. Asus had originally talked up a figure of approx two hundred dollars, which eventually became something more like two hundred and fifty dollars for the seven inch 701 model. It initially had less than stellar battery life thanks to the Intel Celeron that drove it, and used a Linux OS that had more than a few folks confused.

The Shanzhai C200 is the epitome of the netbook evolution, superior in every dept to the original cheapo Eee PC, while hitting even lower price points. The C200 has a larger 10.1" screen and a decent sized and eminently usable keyboard to go with it. The hardware is admittedly standard netbook fare; a 1.6GHz N270 Atom CPU,  1GB of RAM and a 160 hard drive should all be very familiar by now.

What sets the C200 apart from most of its rivals is the inclusion of an in-built 3G SIM card slot under the battery enclosure. This is an important edition for a device that should spend most of its life online. In fact, built-in SIM card support is long over-due. Exactly why we haven't seen this supported on more netbook-class devices is a mystery to me. It could possibly be that the major telcos are slightly wary of technology that would allow 3G connectivity to bring VoIP to fore, cannibalizing their traditional revenue streams. Like I said. It's a total mystery.

By opening the back panel you'll see there is an in-built TV antenna - popular in China where CMMB broadcasts are a plenty. The C200 also has an additional Mini-PCI slot hidden in there, presumably so you can add your own wireless module if so desired.

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