Nokia Booklet $300 at Best Buy with AT&T contract

What a difference a month makes?

Remember in September when we first told you about Nokia's much-anticipated Booklet, the $810 all-aluminum netbook that wasn't? Turns out it really isn't – $810, that is. Nokia, in partnership with Best Buy and AT&T, today announced that the little tyke will be in the hands of the Best Buy blue shirts this holiday season for $299.

For the price of a Dyson Air Multiplier bladeless fan, plus a two-year service contract at $60 a month, the big box will sell customers one of the GPS-enabled, Windows 7-equipped, and, of course, 3G-enabled über-netbooks. That, of course, brings the total cost of a Booklet to a staggering $1739 over the life of the contract.

Is that a deal? Not to this writer, especially considering AT&T's less-than-stellar network performance. Who can forget this summer's AT&T network iPhone-related gripes? Or the fact that AT&T, once wary of allowing bandwidth-hogging applications and devices on its network, now seems to have opened the door to them? (Rhapsody, Skype, MLB video, MMS, we're talking about you.) Is AT&T doing enough to improve its network to make signing up for two years of data service make sense? Verizon doesn't make the decision any easier with its "There's a map for that" campaign.

Without bringing AT&T into the equation, a Nokia Booklet will go for $510, starting Oct. 22. That may be the way many choose to go, opting either to forgo 3G service, or to use pre-paid SIM cards.

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