With friends like this ...

"Meet your new best friend" the ad says that came in my e-mail box yesterday. Only it's a metal contraption manufactured from Japanese parts and not a young woman who could prove her friendship by performing a sexual act or accompanying me to a baseball game - or both.

No, it's a computer. I'm not even sure why we call them computers anymore. They're like cell phones - more cell than phone - and more web-surfing device than a machine that actually "computes" anything. We ain't launching rockets here, gang. Unless you count that Internet-inspired woody you get, but that's another matter.

$299 for a tiny laptop, the ad says. OK, I'm in the market for a new best friend, since I seem to be abandoned by some and forgotten by others. You'll be my friend, LCD screen. And I don't have to feed you or tell you how much I enjoy your company.

The trouble is, (among other things) that the $299 price is a bit of a scam. Surprised? Me neither. It's funny that the ad says, "...it's worth every penny and then some" because it will cost you "and then some."

If you want a CD/DVD drive, it'll cost you. The site tells you (in big red letters) you might not be able to back-up your data or recover files if you don't have a CD drive. So why sell it without one? If you want something other than black, even though the ad says they come in other colors (like the Rolling Stones song) it'll cost you. By the end of the process, the price was closer to $400 and I still wasn't sure if I'd be able to surf the Internet with it so that I could get that woody I'd been promised by my newest, bestest friend.

It should be illegal to advertise such things, since the price isn't anywhere close to what you are actually going to pay, but I suppose our government has more troubling issues to address like buying banks and auto makers and figuring out how 9-percent unemployment can be translated into a financial recovery.

I'll wait.