Recent news in show that Sony is getting ready to release a small laptop (low cost of course) that is based on Via Technologies. A prototype was announced last week and shown by Quanta Computer (contract manufacturer) at WiMax Expo in Taipei. The mini laptop is based on the open source Via OpenBook reference design and will start shipping during the third quarter of this year.

Going into specs we see that the laptop will feature a 1.6 GHz C7-M processor (from Via,of course) and is listed with Sony as manufacturer. What is interesting is that Quanta is currently the largest laptop maker for laptop computers in the world although Sony was listed as manufacturer at the official showing. The truth is that Quanta is currently under contract for many big brands in the industry and they are not allowed to discuss customer facts with anyone. This might be the case with Sony as well and we do expect Sony to be officially listed as manufacturer. We must keep in mind that if Sony is in fact the listed manufacturer, Via only has to gain from this. They recently gained some ground with the C7 chips in the processor market. C7s re perfect for low cost laptops although they are definitely not as powerful as various high end chips produced by AMD and Intel. Combine this with the competition coming from Intel’s Atom processors and we do have a ground for interesting facts to appear that are currently kept secret.

The current OpenBook reference design is aimed to reduce design cycles and is based on a VX800 chipset. We see an 8.9 inch screen that comes with a resolution of 1,024 X 600 pixels. The hard disk stated at the moment can store 80 GB of data and models with more storage space can appear although it is not official. We also know of the existence of a basic wireless module that comes with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and there are some optional modules included like Asisted GPS, support for 3G and WiMax. The OpenBook prototype that was presented by Quanta ran on Windows Vista Home Basic and showed a 60 GB hard disk, WiMax support and 1 GB of RAM memory.