Does inexpensive have to equal cheap?

The Acer Aspire One I recently acquired (and largely raved about) has developed what appear to be motherboard issues. It sometimes won't boot, sometimes won't make it past the BIOS, sometimes won't recognize USB disks, will only occasionally boot from USB, and generally just isn't working very well.

The 9" Aspire One can now be had for well under $300, but really doesn't feel cheap. It's quite usable (when it's working) and felt like it could tolerate a fair amount of student abuse. To be fair, I haven't contacted Acer tech support yet. I've been buried under scheduling and actually getting work done. However, it brings up a point that Apple has made repeatedly in defense of not entering the netbook segment: you get what you pay for.

I don't entirely agree with this perspective, but my initial experience with the Aspire (and general buzz about Acer, which seems to be the Kia of the computer industry before they got their quality together) is that price beats out quality and longevity. I really like to think of netbooks as the culmination of Moore's law: using lower-capability equipment, they are able to deliver a lot of value to this segment.

Am I wrong? I don't think that inexpensive has to equal cheap. Look at the Classmate PC. The Convertible Classmate is running about $450 (no, not exactly $250, but fairly inexpensive for a tablet) and can be dropped and largely beat on by elementary kids. I'm finally getting my test unit back after it's been passed around an elementary school for a few weeks. I've encouraged teachers to let everyone use it with little regard for its safety (it's a loaner from Intel, after all). It's going strong; no muss, no fuss, not a blip.

Inexpensive really doesn't need to equal cheap; netbooks can absolutely represent a viable solution for education on a reasonable refresh cycle. We just need to find the right ones (time and a bit of tech support will tell if the Aspires are the "right ones" or if we need to look elsewhere).