"Noahpad" Asus Eee rival to launch

Tiny white UMPC to get CES debut

2 January 2008 8:35 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Where there is market success, rival products will spring up, and it's no different for Asus' Eee PC that will see a competitor launch at CES in the form of Taiwanese company E-Lead Electronic's "Noahpad" ultra-mobile PC.

Very similar to Asus' small form factor offering, the Noahpad comes in a shiny white finish, boasts a matching 7-inch display, dual touch pads and a split keyboard design.

As far as the innards goes, the Noahpad has Ubuntu 7.10 that can run Windows XP with drivers, a 1GHz VIA C7 Eden processor (CX700 chipset), 512MB worth of RAM and, unlike the Eee, a 30GB hard drive.

Its main USP over the Eee is that the display can be folded back on itself to create a tablet-esque form factor, although without touchscreen abilities, controlling the device when it's in this postition has to be done backwards, with the function keys.

The Noahpad will see an official launch at CES, so we'll bring you more info on the little laptop then, including availability and pricing.