[...] The first Bay Trail-M notebooks to hit the market were dual-cores, based on Celeron N28xx and N29xx parts. The first SKUs were announced as far back as October, but plenty of products were announced in November or December and they are already shipping. Prices start at 249/$249 for entry level devices like the Acer Chromebook C710 or the Acer Aspire E1 (sans OS). There are a number of Bay Trail Celeron notebooks available for under 300 and they are hardly newsworthy, since they have been shipping for weeks.
However, the first quad-core devices are starting to appear and they look even more promising. Most of them are still not available, but they are listed and they are coming. Prices start at 299 for the Acer Aspire E1 510-3520 running Linux, which is based on the Pentium N3520 processor. It packs 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive, DVD burner 15.6-inch 1366x768 display and USB 3.0 connectivity. The processor itself is a quad-core Bay Trail-M part clocked at 2.17GHz, but it can hit 2.42GHz on Turbo.
Asus has the X551 based on the Celeron N2920, which is clocked at 1.86GHz or 2.0GHz on Turbo. The rest of the spec includes 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive, optical drive and Windows 8. Toshiba chose the 2.0GHz Pentium N3510 for the Satellite Pro NB10 and the N3520 for the Satellite C50, which also features 8GB of RAM. Both are listed for under 400 in Europe.