Early last week Acer surprised everybody with the high number of new products it released, including some highly anticipated portable PCs, such as the 11-inch Aspire One netbook. The new model was designed to extend the company's line of small-power, low-cost portable PCs and provide users with some more configuration and design options. It now comes as no surprise that Packard Bell also decided to refresh its netbook lineup, with the recent introduction of two new models, the dot s and the dot m, both based on reference designs from Acer and available in 10.1-inch and 11.6-inch form factors.

The first of the two, the dot s, is designed with a 10.1-inch display and comes with 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity options. Additionally, it will provide users with 1GB of RAM memory, a 160GB hard disk drive for storage, webcam, 5-in-1 card reader and a multitouch trackpad option. The other new netbook, the dot m, will be available in an 11.6-inch form factor and will boast pretty much the same technical specifications as its smaller brother, the dot s. However, it will reportedly be equipped with a 1.33GHz Atom Z520 processor, which replaces the usual 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor, featured in almost every netbook on the market.

The CPU on the dot m should provide users of said netbook with a better overall battery life and consequently a lower system performance. Fortunately, the display on the 11.6-inch netbook is one step further than in most netbooks on the market, providing users with 1366 by 768 pixels. Battery options include 3-cell and 6-cell battery packs, while the operating system will remain the same Microsoft Windows XP.

Slated to become available on store shelves later this week, the new dot s and dot m from Packard Bell should be priced at around 299 Euros and 399 Euros, respectively.