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After months as the subject of speculation in the media, Acer will introduce its own low-cost mini-notebook PC at the Computex trade show in Taipei on Tuesday.

The device will be called the Acer Aspire One, as expected. It will come with an Intel Atom processor, and run Linpus Linux Lite, with Acer's own user interface. Other specs include: an 8GB solid-state drive, 512MB of RAM, 802.11 b/g WiFi, an 8.9-inch screen, and a standard 3-hour battery.

The Aspire One will be available beginning July 2 for $379. Later that month, a version running Windows XP Home Edition with an 80GB hard drive, and 1GB of RAM will be available, though the pricing details on that have yet to be ironed out.

As this niche of computing begins to become more crowded, the specs are beginning to look more or less the same. Price and little details like keyboard and exterior design are going to be the most distinguishing factors.

At $379, the Aspire One is cheaper than the runaway hit Eee PC from Asus, whose 9-inch version begins at $549 for the Linux version, and the $499 Linux-based Hewlett-Packard Mini-Note. (CNET has not yet reviewed the Aspire One, but stay tuned.)

Besides pearl white, Acer also plans to offer a bright blue version, and eventually pink and brown. The keyboard isn't quite as large as the Mini-Note's 92 percent keyboard, coming in at 89 percent of the standard size keyboard for a 14-inch notebook.

But just like its direct competitors, Acer sees two distinct customers for the Aspire One: school kids and the highly mobile tech-savvy set.

Acer's plan it seems is to use its Aspire One as sort of a gateway-PC (No pun intended.) for the uninitiated PC user.

"It's a great device that is a stepping stool to a first-time notebook user," said Sumit Agnihotry, director of notebook product management for Acer America. That way kids can "bypass the desktop completely (and move) to a notebook in less than 18 months."

And if there's something Acer's gotten good at lately, it's moving notebooks. It sells more notebooks than every other computer maker except for HP.

Acer says it sees the mini-notebook as a third device for geeked-out consumers after a smartphone and a standard notebook PC, claiming that "it's much more a single application with an Internet-centric focus," Agnihotry said.

But is it more devices we're after? Or fewer? The genius of the smartphone is how much it can do. With the $379 price point not all that far removed from some of Acer's more inexpensive full-size notebooks, is selling someone on the lack of features of the Aspire One really the way to win customers?

It's clearly not for the mainstream PC users, who generally expect the best features and latest-generation processors when purchasing a new PC. But the company doesn't seem to see any overlap between those customers, saying it doesn't expect this will "cannibalize" its current notebook business at all.

Sony is prepping a notebook based on Via's OpenBook reference design, PC World is reporting.

At the WiMax Expo taking place in Taipei, contract manufacturer Quanta Computer showed a mini-laptop based on Via's just-released design that will be out in the third quarter of this year. A sharp-eyed reporter spotted Sony as the listed manufacturer for the device. When questioned, Quanta representatives apparently clammed up, and it doesn't appear Sony will be commenting either.

The mini notebook has an 8.9-inch screen, at least an 80GB hard drive, will use a 1.6-Gigahertz C7-M processor from Via, and sports a VX800 chipset. The prototype on display was running Windows Vista Home Basic.

So has the Vaio maker finally caved? In February, a Sony exec said if the Eee PC started to do well, and major PC makers started to chase the low-cost laptop market, it was the beginning of "a race to the bottom."

Too late. Hewlett-Packard, Acer, and maybe even Dell, are joining the low-cost, lightweight computing fray. And those are just the big names. Asus continues to crank out Eee PCs, and similar devices from no-names like MSI are widely anticipated.

Sony likes to position itself and its products on the high-end. But it started producing a line of its Vaio notebooks last year that sold for as low as $800. At the time, the company said it wasn't interested in going any lower.

Things, of course, can change. And though low-cost laptops are still a tiny niche of the market, it is another way for manufacturers to differentiate their product lines as notebook prices and profit margins continue their inevitable decline.

Boasting bigger screens, bigger hard drives, and an integrated Webcam, updated versions of the Classmate PC were introduced at the Intel Developer Forum Thursday.

Blurred images of laptops that looked strikingly similar to the Classmate have been floating around the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks, popping up with different names, like the 2go PC. That's just one version, which will be made by Computer Technology Link, or CTL.

Intel creates the basic design for the Classmate PC, a category of computer the chipmaker is calling a NetBook, and regional manufacturers put their own spin on it.

The latest versions will be available starting this month with a 9-inch screen and a 30GB hard drive. It will sell for between $300 and $500. Those prices put it just above the cost of the Classmate PC's chief competition, the XO from the One Laptop Per Child program. The XO costs just under $200, and is chiefly targeted at students in developing nations.

The price of the new Classmate PCs put it in direct competition with the popular Eee PC from Asus, which is also a small, light laptop. From the beginning, Asus has said its Eee PC was intended for children, not necessarily for emerging countries, however. The larger screen, bigger hard drive, and higher price show Intel intends to go after mainstream Western markets now, too.

Don't miss CNET's full review of the new 9-inch Classmate PC.

Click here for more stories on IDF Shanghai.

Intel will bring out a version of the Atom processor for low-cost desktops, among other form factors, according to a report.

The Atom processor, announced earlier this week, is a tiny low-power, low-cost processor destined for ultramobile devices and low-cost desktops typically running either Linux or Windows XP. The first Atom chips will ship in the second quarter.

A dual-core version of the Atom processor, due in the third quarter, will run at 1.87GHz and have a thermal envelope of 12 watts, according to the Chinese-language Web site HKEPC, which cites Taiwan motherboard manufacturers as sources. Some designs that use this version of Atom will have passive cooling. Passive cooling systems are typically fanless and thereby use less power.

Intel will not comment on unannounced products but spokesman Bill Calder said that there will be a dual-core Atom processor for desktops--which Intel is calling "Nettops"--that will appear after single-core versions. As previously reported, Atom processors for notebooks (Netbooks) will not be dual-core. At least not initially.

The dual-core version may find its way into set-top boxes and embedded systems too, the report said.

Systems will use a 945 Northbridge chipset and an ICH7 Southbridge. The Northbridge chipset connects the CPU to memory and the PCI bus. The Southbridge controls I/O functions, such as USB, audio, serial, and the system BIOS. Some of the systems may use an Intel "Little Falls 2" Mini-ITX motherboard, a tiny (17x17 cm) low-power motherboard design developed by VIA Technologies, the report said.

This push by Intel--with both processors and motherboards--is expected to pose a challenge to VIA, which is a major player in the embedded market.

Following a number of delays, the One Laptop per Child Foundation's much-awaited XO laptop for needy kids has finally gone into mass production. Early Tuesday (local time), Taiwan's Quanta Computer started producing the green-and-white computer in its new Changshu manufacturing center, two hours northwest of Shanghai.

The commencement of mass production means children in developing nations could have the rugged, open-source laptops in hand starting this month. The OLPC has already announced orders for kids in Uruguay and Mongolia. (Residents of the U.S. and Canada participating in the Give 1 Get 1 program--which donates an XO to a child in a developing nation for every machine sold online--are expected to start getting laptops in December.)

"Today represents an important milestone in the evolution of the One Laptop per Child project," MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the nonprofit One Laptop per Child, said in a statement Tuesday. "Against all the naysayers, and thanks to great partners such as Quanta, we have developed and now manufactured the world's most advanced and greenest laptop and one designed specifically to instill a passion for learning in children."

Quanta has recently increased its manufacturing capacity, and says XO production will ramp up over time.

The XO laptop, while generally heralded by many for its good intentions and potential impact, has hit its share of snags on the road to adoption. In addition to production delays, which give competing low-cost machines time to gain traction, the price point, originally set for $100, has crept up closer to $200.

On Thursday, WalMart begins selling the Everex Green gPC TC2502, a $198, low-power, Linux-based PC designed primarily for running Web 2.0 applications.

When users first fire up their gPC, they'll get a Mac-like desktop with a series of program icons "docked" across the bottom. The icons are bookmarks to popular and useful Web 2.0 services from Google and other vendors. There are icons for Google Docs, Gmail, Google Maps, and YouTube, for example, as well as Meebo, Facebook, and Wikipedia. Sprinkled into the lineup are some non-Web-based apps, like Skype and Gimp, but the novice user won't know, initially, which are local applications and which are Web services.

Isn't that as it should be? An app is an app, so why should users know or care if it's running on their local PC or in the cloud?

Unfortunately, using the gPC's Web apps isn't as transparent as we'd like, although that's not Everex's fault. Web apps still run in a browser (and the gPC won't ship with Adobe AIR or another runtime platform that runs online apps in their own windows), so each time a user clicks on one of the icons that's pointing to a URL, it will fire up Firefox or a new tab in it. Also, Web apps require their own online logins (though if you're logged into Google, you have to worry about that only once per session). And, of course, there's the question of where one's data is stored. The gPC has a hard disk, but users of the Web apps won't be putting files on it. (It also has OpenOffice installed on it, but users will have to dig to find the suite.)

My criticisms are aimed mostly at Web apps in general, and this is nonetheless a great product. It costs less than $200 and you don't have to buy one for a child you've never met to get it (not that that's a bad thing, but it would drive up your cost). It will do what most of us need, thanks to all the Web 2.0 sites and services that are available now and that don't require the equivalent of a Cray supercomputer to run acceptably fast. The gPC, which Everex is selling with Google's blessing, gives us a look at what a Web PC should be: A much cheaper but almost-as-capable alternative to a regular PC or Mac. This is the closest thing I've seen to a Web appliance that might actually sell.

The gPC runs a 1.5GHz VIA C7-D processor and ships with 512MB of RAM and a 80GB hard drive. The operating system is gOS, from a new company of the same name. It's a version of Ubuntu 7.10 with the Enlightenment window manager. The $198 price tag does not include a monitor. But it does include 24/7 800-number tech support.

The gPC will be available at Walmart.com and at these Wal-Mart retail stores.

See also these interesting Linux-powered products from Everex competitor Asus: The P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard with embedded Firefox, and the Eee PC 4G, and low-cost Linux laptop

We were recently lamenting the vaporware status of many of the small, low-cost laptops tech types have been buzzing about this year. Apparently, this whole blogging this really works, 'cause less than a month later, two of our MIA systems are sitting right here in the CNET Lab.

First up is the Asus Eee PC. The company's 2-pound, 7-inch, Linux-based laptop built up a lot of buzz for promising a reasonably functional machine for about $200. In reality, it ended up costing $399 (for the middle-of-three model we got), but it's still a creative take on the ultraportable laptop.

With 512MB of RAM and a 4GB solid state hard drive, the Eee uses a custom Linux install instead of the Windows operating system. In our initial hands-on tests, the setup actually worked quite well, with plenty of preinstalled software--Firefox for Web surfing, Open Office for productivity, plus Skype and a generic media player. Much anything beyond that is probably outside the scope of the system's limited hardware.

One plus is the SD card slot--pop in a 4GB SD card, and you've doubled the hard drive space. Just don't expect to keep your entire MP3 collection on there.

Right after the Eee showed up, we got another inexpensive pint-sized laptop dropped off at our doorstep. This time, it was the Intel Classmate PC. Designed by Intel as a low-cost laptop for schools in developing countries, we've been itching to get one since we got a detailed hands-on preview over the summer.

The Classmate starts at $225, and for around $350, you can get it preloaded with Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003 (although its not currently available to individual consumers), and it comes in various configurations--ours had a 900Mhz Intel Celeron CPU, only 256MB of RAM, a 2GB flash hard drive, and a specially stripped down version of Windows XP, designed to fit on the tiny hard drive. The Classmate is larger than the Eee, with a thick plastic shell designed to withstand the rigors of the developing world and a leather cover with a built-in handle.

Check out these pics for a side-by-side comparison, and stay tuned for full reviews and videos of these two low-priced laptops next week.

Savor the irony. When there is a blackout, your solar power system will probably go out too.

That's because most systems are tied to the electrical grid. (In Germany, the utilities pay for this electricity, but in most states here, the utilities give you credit against any grid power you might buy.) To ensure that their workers don't get hurt, utilities shut off all devices that feed power into particular sectors of the grid when doing repairs.

To ameliorate that problem, SMA America, the U.S. group of a larger German company, has released a new version of its Sunny Island inverter. An inverter converts DC power coming from the panels into AC power that can be used in your home or fed into the grid. The company's Sunny Boy inverters are grid-tied. The Sunny Island line feeds the power into batteries instead.

"It's for vacation cabins, or backup systems," said Jeffrey Philpott, marketing manager for SMA America.

The new Sunny Island 5048U, announced at Solar Power 2007 taking place in Long Beach, Calif., has 20 percent more capacity than its predecessor. It can provide up to 5,000 watts of power. So in case you need to start a motor or something (think Charlton Heston in The Omega Man), the Sunny Island will do the job.

Like other inverter companies and even solar panel companies, SMA is trying to reduce the cost of installation and service. Installation is half of the cost of most solar systems.

"The installers like to go out once. They lose the money they made if they have to go out and fix something," he said.

SunPower, the fast-growing U.S. maker of high efficiency solar panels and cells, includes SMA inverters in its systems. SMA also sells through distributors.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--On the morning of day three here at Search Engine Strategies ("SES") San Jose, Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search product and user experience, gave her keynote presentation. She said a lot of interesting things, but of particular note to me was that she deemed cost-per-action (CPA) "the Holy Grail."

According to Marissa, Google is making moves towards cost-per-action as a more ideal auction-based pricing model, but she also pointed out that it's a long way away.

Cost-per-action may be a new term for some readers, so I'll review it for a moment, and then move on to explain why I think her comment is important.

Through its AdWords product, Google has been testing a version of CPA in which advertisers pay Google only when a certain marketing goal is met. Where cost-per-click means someone pays Google (or another entity) each time a user clicks on a particular piece of advertising, cost-per-action means that someone pays when a user completes a potentially larger and more involved transaction. Google gives the example of an airline paying a certain CPA every time a user clicks on their ad and purchases a plane ticket. Only when both deeds are done does the airline pay, but it will most likely be a larger sum paid than a simple cost per click.

Why, then, is Marissa's statement about cost-per-action so important? There are several reasons. First, CPA has the potential to significantly reduce the occurrence of click fraud--a bigger problem than most pay-per-click advertisers realize. This reduction will occur because the charge on the advertiser is better tied to the advertiser's desired end result. While click fraud detection systems like PPC Assurance will help advertisers get some of those dollars back that were lost through fraud, Google really needs to make it a lot harder to commit click fraud. With the current CPC model, it's easy for fraudsters to invoke a charge on the advertiser with a simple click of the mouse. Conducting a more involved transaction, like the purchase of an airline ticket, is much harder for fraudsters to game.

Secondly, if CPA becomes the dominant advertising model for Google, it will affect the entire search marketing industry. The acquisition of clicks will become less interesting to marketers, and as such, strategies and tactics will change. The harder-to-measure "action" will become central. This could spill over into the SEO industry, where CPC-based organic search solutions like GravityStream and perhaps even ongoing retainer-based SEO consulting packages may, over time, be priced and/or judged in terms related to CPA. In other words, "actions" may be a more elusive metric to track than raw traffic, but it is much more telling as to the ROI of the search marketing spend.

As Marisa said, the evolution to cost-per-action as the default model is a long way away. So pay-per-click will be the prevailing search advertising model for some time to come. Nonetheless, you should start thinking about your search engine marketing in "cost-per-action" terms now, giving yourself a leg up against your competitors in years to come.