ARM-powered Android netbook tips up

A GOOGLE ANDROID-POWERED netbook has tipped up from Chinese firm SkyTone, but don't hold your breath just yet, it's really not very impressive.

Fair enough, the guys from Guanzhou are only flogging the little lappie for $100 , but even for that paltry sum the Alpha-680 Google Android netbook is a bit naff.

Made from what appears to be very cheap plastic, the netbook sports a tiddly seven inch display with 800 x 480 WVGA resolution, has only 128MB of DDR2 memory, 1GB NAND flash and runs on an ARM 11 533 MHz 32bit CPU.

To its credit, however, the netbook does seem to have a swively touchscreen, Wifi, Ethernet, 3G, a couple of USB ports and an SD card slot bunged into the low-cost package.

Android netbooks may have only tentatively started to tip up, but at least another two - Pegatron's Freescale based netbook and little known, Atom based I-Buddie - are set to pop up on shelves any day now.

To be kind, Skytone's attempt definitely looks way better than your standard etch-a-sketch and is not all that bad for a firm which has only really had success making skype headsets. Oh, and it does come in Pink, Yellow, Red, Black and White. Oooooh! µ