Gigabyte to Produce Low-Cost Notebook

With the possibility of an Intel 1.6 GHz processor under the hood, Gigabyte's upcoming notebook has the potential to be one of the snappier low-cost models.

It seems you’re just not a legitimate manufacturer in Taiwan these days unless you’ve got plans to produce a low-cost notebook in the same league as the Asus EEE. Well, here comes another one. Gigabyte Technologies became the latest company to throw its name in the hat on Thursday, when vice president Richard Ma revealed his company’s plans to Digitimes.

According to Ma, Gigabyte’s new low-cost notebook will ride on Intel’s new Shelton’08 platform. According to a seperate Digitimes article, Shelton will offer a 1.6 GHz processor and total power consumption of eight watts, putting expected runtime in the three to four hour range. Screen size, like all models in the low-cost PC sector, will be between seven and inches. Although Ma did not indicate a timeframe for the notebook’s arrival, the Shelton platform is expected to debut in the third quarter of 2008. No price was predicted.

Besides the low-cost notebook, Ma also mentioned that Gigabyte has plans for an Internet device based on Intel’s Menlow platform, as well as an ultra-mobile PC.