TAIWANESE COMPUTER MAKER, Acer has said that it’ll be launching its first cheapo laptop offering with Intel’s Atom chip inside this June at the Computex trade being held in Taipei.

On Wednesday, J.T. Wang, the company's chairman said that Acer’s new low-cost laptop, or in marketing speak, "ultra mobility notebook", should weigh in at just under a Kg, making it a veritable lightweight.

But, unlike other companies who wax a load of lyrical rubbish about their low cost lappies being created for the sole purpose of helping the third world, Acer is refreshingly honest and admits that it’s in no way interested in marketing its new baby to the developing world. Acer wants rich people to buy its laptops. Lots of them.

The diminutive Atom is the Intel microprocessor series formerly known as Diamondville. It's been designed especially for use in small, cheap portable computers and mobile Internet devices (MIDs), being as it measures less than 25 square millimetres in size. Intel has said that its dinky chip can run at up to 1.8GHz on only 0.6 watts to 2.5 watts thermal design power.

Chipzilla reckons that there are currently over 25 low cost laptops in the works based on the Atom, and last week, we reported that another Taiwanese computer maker, Asustek, would be building its new version of its popular Eee on an Atom processor, as opposed to the current Intel mobile Celeron processor.

Two other Taiwanese competitors, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) and Micro-Star International have also said they’ll be unveiling similar cheap Atom based laptop options soon. µ

L’Inq
Info World

See Also
Asus Eee PC with Intel's Atom CPU to launch in June