Emachines on Monday unveiled its first wireless notebook computer.
The new M5310 features Broadcom’s 54g chipset. 54g is Broadcom’s brand name for 802.11g, the recently approved standard that extends the data rate of the 802.11b standard from 11Mbps to 54Mbps.
Like its predecessor, the M5305, the new laptop has a 15.4-inch, widescreen display and weighs 6.5 pounds. The M5310 adds an AMD Athlon 2400 processor and a 1394 (FireWire) port for high-speed peripheral connections.
Emachines also shaved $50 off the price; the new model lists for $1,199.
The M5310 also includes a 40GB hard drive, 512 MB of memory, a CD-RW/DVD combo drive and three USB 2.0 ports.
Also on Monday, Acer introduced a line of notebooks under $1,000 that incorporate Intel’s Centrino package of the Pentium M processor, chipset and an 802.11b mini-PCI card. Intel plans to introduce an 802.11b/g version of Centrino early next year.
