San Jose (CA) – Netbook is an increasingly popular mobile computer category, if we believe manufacturers and analyst predictions, but at least prices of these devices are still much too close to traditional notebooks and prevent Netbooks from being a compelling value. Acer is one of those companies that may have been too optimistic with its pricing and decided to cut the price of its netbook by more than 10% just one month after launch.

Acer dropped the price of its Aspire One by $50 from $379 to $329 for the Linux version with a flash drive and from $399 to $349 for the entry-level Windows XP model with a 120 GB hard drive and drive 1 GB of memory. The 160 GB version fell from $449 to $399. The company justified the move for the repositioning of the “popular ultra-lightweight mobile Internet device” to “provide affordability and value just in time for back-to-school.”

We were not able to confirm any rumors that the key reason to drop the price was that the device simply did not sell because of its price.

Compared to regular notebooks, netbooks ask buyers to make significant compromises in terms of functionality, while entry-level notebooks with more powerful processors, big displays and big hard drives already sell for about $500.