Gateway Netbook Exists But Not Planned for U.S. Shores

Reports are out this morning about Gateway releasing a netbook in Asia. Called the LT1001G the 8.9-inch netbook is a rebadged Acer Aspire one (Note: Acer owns Gateway) and comes with 1.6 GHz Atom processor, 1 GB RAM and 160 GB hard drive. Last week when we met with Gateway and Acer here in New York City we got a quick glimpse of the Gateway branded netbook. We can confirm that it really is a rebadged Acer Aspire one with a few added adornments. The picture above shows the outside lid sporting a similar design to the Gateway MC Series, but the one we saw had a plain, black glossy lid with a silver Gateway logo. The 8.9-inch netbook has the same exact keyboard and trackpad as the Aspire one, but had a soft, felt feeling palm rest. It also had red coloring on its hinge.  Though we didn’t get to test the netbook for too long it was running Windows XP and had an internal 3G card (along with a light on the front edge that indicated there was 3G connectivity). Gateway’s Taipei team has publicly referenced plans for the Gateway netbook and it will be available soon in some markets in Asia. The U.S. Gateway team maintains that there  are no immediate plans to introduce it in the U.S. Our discussions with Gateway last week seemed to hint at the fact that the minimal differences between the Gateway netbook and the Aspire one just didn’t justify its introduction in the U.S. market.