One of the reasons netbooks are not even cheaper is because their hard drives are pretty expensive. The cheaper a component, the cheaper the netbook overall.
Today’s good news is that Seagate, Western Digital and Hitachi, three leading hard drive manufacturers are working on new 2.5 inch low cost HDD made specifically for netbooks.
Intel did their bit with Atom and I see other component makers producing specific low cost parts for netbooks. I just hope that the quality will be as good but I should not worry much because if any given component manufacturer makes a lousy component, there are always competing products to choose from instead.
The days of a $100 netbook seem to be closer than we all thought!
See: Hard Drives for Netbooks Getting Cheaper, Pushing overall Prices Down