Cherrypal rolls out $99 netbook, 13-inch Atom notebook
updated 12:25 pm EST, Tue December 15, 2009
Cherrypal Africa carries 7in screen, Linux
Cherrypal today sought to bend the limits of notebooks by formally releasing the Africa, what it bills as the world's first $99 portable. The system is intended both for the developed and developing worlds and achieves its price by using a 7-inch screen, a normally phone-oriented 400MHz processor and the choice of either Linux or Windows CE. By virtue of its roots, the Africa only needs 256MB of RAM and 2GB of permanent storage.
A second model goes in the opposite direction of netbook design. The Bing uses the 1.6GHz Atom, 1GB of RAM and 160GB hard drive of many netbooks but with an atypically large 13.3-inch (albeit 1024x600) screen to give it the comfortable display and larger keyboard of a regular notebook. It runs on Windows XP and has typical netbook-level extras such as a 1.3-megapixel webcam, 802.11g Wi-Fi and a card reader. It sells for $389.
Both systems are available to order as of today.
