Shortcut to Net Offers No Frills; Ditto the Review

Regarding your review of the i-opener [“Pumped-up Appliance or No-Frills Computer? i-opener a Shortcut to Net,” E-Review, March 9]it appears that your reviewer confused writing a press release with reviewing a product, and the press release written is very poor.

It isn’t until the very end of the review that the author notes that the online fee subsidizes the cost of the “computer.” Right now, you can get $400 or more off any computer if you simply sign up for three years from any one of several online service providers.

And with the price of many computers at $400 to $500 before the rebate, what advantage does the i-opener have over the other computers? Small size? Yes, but with that small size comes a lot of disadvantages such as no hard drive, no CD-ROM, no disk drive, no ability to use a variety of printers, and limited Web surfing.

Ease of setup with all the newer computers is little more than plugging in a few cables and the phone line.

I think your reviewer needs to be a lot more objective when reviewing new products and offer honest comparisons with the existing ones.

JERRY SCHNEIR

Santa Monica