The leak of the Archos 10 Mini Laptop today was greeted with a round chorus of shoulder shrugs and cries of 'what's so good about that?', as it seemed to be nothing more than a standard netbook with average specs.
The glimmer of hope lay in the possibility that it would at least compete in price with the imperviously cheap Asus EEE netbook series, though Archos' love of more expensive objects hinted this wouldn't be the case.
And unfortunately, that's proved to be the situation. For £349 you can get your hands on the Archos-branded netbook, which appears to be the Hasee MJ125, although Archos hasn't confirmed this yet.
It will be available both online from Archos' own site and on shop shelves from later on this month, though TechRadar is trying to get more specific info on the exact date you can lay your hands on this new addition to the Archos family.
Standard media
It also appears that the netbook won't be sporting any specially created Archos media-playing software according to Techradar's sources, meaning that users will probably have to make do with Windows Media Player.
However, it will come with access to Archos' Media Club, meaning users can download or rent content direct to the PC, as well as free music from Deezer and internet radio and TV from vTuner, so Archos hasn't left media fans totally out in the cold.
Archos has described the Mini Laptop as "ideally suited for the first-time buyer or as a supplement to a primary notebook," clearly latching onto the idea of what a netbook is.
Given the success of Archos Internet Media Tablet range, it's hoped that this is just the first Mini Laptop in a range of many, so perhaps it won't be too long until Archos comes out with its own touchscreen enabled PC. Then we can start getting excited.
