Planet Lowyat

Dell is planning to introduce a low-cost notebook in August to join the low-cost notebook market, according to the market sources. The notebook will be manufactured by Compal Electronics, according to the sources.

Dell is coming to the low-cost notebook party relatively late, compared to other first-tier vendors such as Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Acer. However, the Dell E series low-cost notebook will be priced at only US$299, US$100 cheaper than Acer’s Aspire one, and the market sources estimates that Dell can ship 2-3 million units this year.

The panels for the Dell notebook will be provided by Samsung Electronics and Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO), and perhaps AU Optronics (AUO), when the panel makers begins mass production later in the third quarter. However, the sources noted that Dell will not use all three panel suppliers at the same time.

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Micro-Star International (MSI) plans to launch Wind, an ultra-low cost laptop that runs on Intel’s Atom microprocessor, this June in the U.S., the company confirmed Friday.

The U.S. edition of Wind will come in two different versions, one for $549 running Microsoft’s Windows XP. A few things set Wind apart from competitors, including the 1.6GHz Atom microprocessor, larger screen size and a six-cell battery that gives it around six hours of power. Wind also carries an 80GB hard disk drive (HDD) instead of a flash memory-based Solid State Drive (SSD).

The other version of Wind will use Novell’s SUSE Linux OS and cost $399. The Linux device shares the same screen size, HDD and microprocessor as the XP device. But it carries a three-cell battery that allows only around 2.5 hours of power and does not offer wireless data transfer using Bluetooth, which the XP device does. The Linux version also comes with less DRAM (dynamic RAM), 512M-bytes versus 1G-byte for the XP laptop.

Both Wind laptops come in a variety of colors, including black, white and pink, can access the Internet via Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, sport 1.3-megapixel Webcams and three USB (universal serial bus) ports.

There will also be several hardware configurations users can choose from that can make the laptop more or less expensive. For example, Wind can carry up to a 320G-byte HDD, which would cost more.

MSI will market smaller version of Wind with an 8.9-inch screen elsewhere in the world, but not in the U.S., at least not initially.

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I posted about the low cost laptop such as EeePC and Acer EeePC competitor early,  Digitimes reported another low cost laptop from Gigabyte Technology Taiwan.

Gigabyte Technology has join the growing list of companies to jump on the low-cost PC bandwagon with plans to launch its contender for the market in June, company vice president Richard Ma, has revealed.

The low-cost PC will support Intel’s Basic Platform and feature a panel size of 7- to 9-inch, Ma detailed. Prior to the launch of the low-cost PC, Ma updated that Gigabyte will roll out Menlow-based mobile Internet device (MID) and ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) products in April. Having its presence in notebooks and portable devices strengthened, Ma said Gigabyte is likely to see its notebook business unit swing to profit in 2008.

Regarding corresponding production partners, Ma said Gigabyte will design and manufacture the low-cost PC itself. Arima Computer will be the OEM for UMPC production and Compal Electronics and Quanta Computer will remain as notebook OEMs, he detailed.

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