Asus claims thinnest, lightest 15-inch notebook PC

HANOVER, GERMANY - Asus Computer  will offer what it claims to be the thinnest and lightest notebook PC with a 15-inch screen, the company said Wednesday at the Cebit trade show here.

Some versions of the V6800V series will be 25 millimeters thick, and weigh 2.55 kilograms, and will be the thinnest and lightest available with 15-inch screens, according to Holger Schmidt, a spokesman for the company

Different versions of the V6800V series that have a more powerful battery will fit in the same casing, but weigh a little more at 2.6 kilograms, he said.

The smaller 4-cell battery will enable the notebook PCs to operate for about four hours, while the versions with the larger 8-cell battery should allow about eight hours of operation, he said.

All of the V6800V series models will come with the latest version of Intel's Centrino technology, which is code-named Sonoma, the company said. Centrino is a combination of the Pentium M processor, the Alviso chipset and an 802.11 wireless chip.

The notebooks will be available with various Pentium M processors with three different clock speeds starting at 1.73GHZ, according to the company.

"These are small and light notebooks that are nearly as powerful as desktop (PC) replacements," Schmidt said.

An entry-level version has a 60G-byte hard drive, while other versions will have 80G-byte hard drives. The company is considering adding 100G-byte hard drives for later versions, Schmidt said.

Different specifications will be available for versions of the notebook sold in different European countries and in regions such as Asia Pacific, but the company doesn't plan to sell the light version in Germany, he said.

The light versions will go on sale in Taiwan this week and in Hong Kong in about two weeks, said Marvis Hsiao, deputy director of the company's Asia Pacific sales & marketing group. The light versions should be on sale later this year in China and South Korea, but no versions will be sold in Japan, Hsiao said. Company officials declined to provide pricing information for the lightest versions of the computer.

The company declined comment on whether it plans to sell the V6800V in the U.S.