I can buy a damn good laptop for £350. One example being an eeePC 901, 1.6Ghz, 20GB SSD, 4GB memory, blah blah
And how much was a laptop 3 years ago? It's called market. There is an offer and there is a demand. And someone sets the pricetag on it.
Still, its Apple, therefore a million and one people will glady rob their grannies to pay for the phone + apple design tax
Man, are you jellous or what? Well, in my wifes case she didn't rob her granny. She's working and can effort that thing. And it wasn't because Apple makes it. It's because this thing is imho the first and only mobile size device that you can surf the net productively when you are on the road. There is no need to look at cutoff warp pages, you can get the full experience. Plus the little apps you can get, some are very useful. It is also very easy to use, no need to read a 200pg manual.
Apple apparently decided to use a sub-standard 3G chip, so somewhat ironically the answer to that question is no. Or charitably "once in a blue moon".
I can't agree to that. Here is works just fine.