• Tweet

Pegatron first teased us with a thin, light, and ARM-based netbook back at CES in January. At the time, the company’s promise of a $199 seemed a bit hard to believe. But that seems to be the target price for many of the ARM powered mini-laptops on display at Computex this week. It’s possible that it will take a subsidy from a mobile wireless carrier to hit that price point, but since most of these netbooks will probably only be available from a telecom, it’s possible we could see some smartbooks selling for even less.

Anyway, Sascha from NetbookNews.de got a better look at the Pegatron netbook in Taipei this week. The machine has a Freescale i.MX515 processor which runs at 800MHz and should provide up to 8 hours of battery life. It also has a 4GB SSD.

Because of the laptop’s ARM-based processor, it can’t run Windows XP, Vista, or 7. But Sascha spotted two different models, one running Xandros Linux, while the other had what looks like a new Linux distribution called Movial which is designed to make Linux as user friendly as a cellphone operating system.

You can check out Sascha’s video after the break. (Yes, I’m getting a little tired of typing that phrase, but Sascha is like a video production machine this week).