Looks like you can add Toshiba to the ranks of netbook brands going the subsidy route. Over the weekend, jkOTR reader Hector Gomez and I both saw the deal in this week’s Best Buy circular — which is actually square, not circular at all. The standard $399 price for a Toshiba NB-205 looks like it got jacked up by $100 because the netbook alone is advertised at $499. I suspect that’s simply to make the subsidy deal look more attractive, because this configuration is routinely $399. In any case, you can nab the NB-205 for $299 with integrated HSPA service through AT&T for the next two years. If you’d rather go with integrated EVDO on the Verizon or Sprint network, you’ll pay $229. In either case, you’ll be paying $1,440 over the next two years for your service, so don’t overlook that budgetary point.

More interesting is the netbook’s configuration because it’s the same as what I bought in August of this year. This is the Windows XP Home version of the NB-205 with the 1.66GHz Intel Atom and 160 GB hard drive. Now that Windows 7 is available, I would have expected this deal to come with Microsoft’s latest operating system. Of course, that would likely be the Starter Edition, which does have a few limitations.  Does anyone else find it odd that this deal features Windows XP and not Windows 7?