Acer Officially Launches 10-inch Aspire One

Acer today officially launched the 10-inch Aspire One netbook. We’ve been seeing unofficial pictures of the mini notebook over the last few weeks and hearing about it in dribs and drabs but now, here it is in all its (mostly generic) glory.

The Aspire One comes packing Intel’s usual N270 Atom 1.6 GHz processor, a Mobile 945GSE Express chipset and the capacity for up to 2GB of DDR2. It’s got a multi-card reader, a 160 GB hard drive, Bluetooth, VGA, a 1024 x 600 display and is bundled with Windows XP.

While it’s always good to have options, Acer is a little late to the 10-inch netbook party that's been ruled by both Asus and MSI.

The Eee 1000-series and Wind U100 are dominating the market and Dell’s recently launched Mini 10 is already looking to up the ante. While the 10-inch market does seem to be flooded by two players, Acer did say late last year that the company plans to take half of the netbook market in 2009 so we guess adding a 10-inch Aspire One is part of that plan. As the 8.9-inch Aspire One did, perhaps the new 10-inch version will compete with a lower price point than the rest -- a key that makes the current Aspire One so popular -- but we'll have to wait for it to hit the street to know for sure.

The upcoming Aspire One comes with a 6-cell battery and Acer claims a battery life of up to 7 hours. For those into aesthetics, the machine is available in black, white, red or blue.