Asustek, Acer unveil low-cost notebooks

Strengthening its position in the low-cost notebook market, Asustek,
popularly known as Asus-has launched Eee PC 1000, 901 and 1000H at the ongoing
Computex 2008 in Taipei.

The newly launched Asus Eee PC 1000 and 901 runs on Asus' Super Hybrid Engine
that gives up to 7.8 hours battery life. Asus also has 802.11n support in the
newly launched Asus Eee 901 and 1000 products. Addressing the similar market
segment, Acer has unveiled its Aspire One. Incidentally, all the new systems
feature Intel's new Atom N230 CPU.

The 1000H includes Linux support, up to 2GB of DDR2 memory, Bluetooth and the
product comes with an 80GB SATA HDD for Windows XP models, or 160GB HDD when
shipped with Linux. On the other hand, the Eee PC 1000 supports Linux, up to 2GB
of DDR2 memory, Bluetooth, and 40GB flash-based storage.

The company has not yet finalized the price, however, an Asus representative
informed on conditions of anonymity that the Eee PC 1000 series will be
available in Taiwan later this month at around $560, and can be expected to
appear in other markets within Asia.

Low-cost notebook from Acer-Aspire measures 8.9-inch, which offers a choice
of either an 8GB SSD or 80GB hard disk drive. In addition to this, the product
comes with 512MB or 1GB memory, and a 5-in-1 card reader. The product carries
battery life of three hours using the standard 3-cell battery, and up to six
hours with an optional 6-cell battery.

While a product like this carries a lot of importance for a price sensitive
market like India, experts close to the industry believe that the low-cost
notebook market may impact the overall notebook market in terms of gross margins
for vendors as well as makers alike, as low cost notebooks sales are expected to
cannibalize the mainstream notebook market-as well as considerably bring down
the average selling prices in the mainstream notebook market.