Acer launches new netbook, promises WiMAX

By Tim Conneally | Published June 3, 2008, 11:44 AM

Call them sub-notebooks, netbooks, UMPCs, or what one clever Engadget poster deemed them: "Liliputers," the biggest hardware launches at Computex in Taipei this week fall into the umbrella category of "smallest."

The specifications for Acer's Aspire One are now official as of today: With a profile of 9.8" x 6.7" x 1.14", a weight of under 2 pounds, and an LED display with 1024 x 600 resolution, the Aspire One is about on par with its fellow netbooks in size.

By comparison, HP's Mini-Note runs a little over two pounds and offers a 1280 x 768 WXGA display, and the venerable Asus Eee pre-body redesign measured in at a tiny 8.8 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches with only a 7" display.

With these new specs, Acer slightly exceeds speculation late last week when early pictures of the device emerged.

One Acer Aspire One

The Atom-based devices come with either 512 MB or 1 GB of RAM and come with either Linplus Linux Lite or the immortal Windows XP home edition.

Linplus Linux Lite

Similarly, bundles can come with either an 8 GB NAND Flash SSD or an 80 GB internal HDD. Memory is expandable with two SD memory slots. When equipped with a standard 3-cell battery, awake time for the machine will reach about three hours (varying with configuration, of course) and battery life can be doubled with a 6-cell battery.

Though Acer is offering the standard 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi connectivity with its first crop of Aspire One books, it promises WiMAX-ready versions of the ultra portable "later this year."

Two Acer Aspire Ones

The earliest crop of sub-notebooks -- back when most called them UMPCs -- carried a price tag that was viewed as too high for the functionality provided. Asus proved that the proverbial magic number with this type of computers is $299, and set the precedent by offering the base model of its first Eee PC at that price. Acer's first Aspire Ones will overshoot that magic price only by a little, but still remain quite competitive at $379.

Comments

View comments by with a score of at least

They're not offering 802.11n but they're offering WiMAX?

Score: 0

|

WiMax capability is nice.

Now, if only more major carriers would adopt it aside from Sprint-Nextel!

Score: 0

|

PDC 2009: What have we learned this week?

There was the freebie that no one will forget, the heebie-jeebies courtesy of Scott Guthrie, and a teensy bit clearer picture of how this cloud thingie should work.

Live report: Will Google Chrome OS change Linux?

The mysteries of just what Chrome OS is, and how much of an operating system it truly is, may be resolved today.

PDC 2009: Microsoft cares about Web browser performance

The effort to give users of the world's dominant Web browser the impression of quality, is a personal one for the man who leads that battle.

Nokia re-affirms its commitment to Symbian, sort of

Maemo won't necessarily be replacing Symbian in the Nokia N-Series, but that's definitely a place where it will be found.

E-book readers will be in short supply this holiday season

E-readers are hot this year, and a lot of compelling new products have been released, but are there enough electrophoretic displays to go around?

Sony looks to finally open a single storefront for downloads

Sony has had many different download portals for movies, music, e-books, and games, and now it's looking to make a single shop for all of it.

Tuning out the tablet: Time to give the endless speculation a rest

Wide Angle Zoom: Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying....won't put an iTablet on the market.

Five improvements for IT managers in 2010

If businesses are to improve their efficiency for next year, they need to stop and reassess the basic tenets of their job.

AOL's spinoff from Time Warner to shed 2,500 jobs

As AOL moves toward become an independent company again, it will cut nearly a third of its workforce.

Gartner: SMS-based money transfer will be bigger than mobile browsing, search

Gartner issues its predictions for the 10 things our phones will be doing in 2012.

Don't forget to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 beta 3 today

Mozilla has released the latest beta its Firefox 3.6 browser software, just over one week after beta 2.