Notebooks by Dell and Taiwan-based Elitegroup Computer Systems are the winners of a contest for the best sub-$1000 laptop designs with embedded mobile broadband adapters.
Dell’s winning model was its Inspiron 1525, while ECS was honored for its pre-production G10IL. Both are priced at $800 or less. Winners were announced at a news conference at the Mobile World Congress here today.
Sponsored by Microsoft and the GSM Association–the wireless telecommunications trade group that sponsors MWC (formerly known as 3GSM)–the contest was announced at the GSMA Mobile Asia conference in Macau last November. It was designed to encourage notebook vendors to create more affordably priced systems with HSPA (high-speed packet access) in order to attract mass-market users to wireless broadband.
Judges considered not only the hardware, features and price of the competing designs, but how the vendors intend to work with carriers to simplify account activation and use of the embedded mobile broadband adapter.
