Dell to join Eee rivals with low-cost laptop

Well, we guess that Sony VP was right and the current consumer laptop market is now all about the "race to the bottom" as Dell become the latest computer company poised to join the Eee-wannabes with a rumoured forthcoming launch of a rival device.

There's not a lot to go on at the moment - a Taiwanese manufacturing source has revealed that the American PC giant plans to launch a low-cost notebook as early as June.

Apparently to be manufactured by Compal Electronics Inc, a Compal official has said they plan to initially ship 200,000-300,000 notebook computers to Dell each month and up to 2 million before the year is out.

Currently Packard Bell and HP offer Eee rival devices in the UK, Intel will launch its Classmate PC here soon and Samsung is to reposition and re-price its UMPC to fit the market.