Sylvania, a New Brand in the Netbook Market

As we mentioned in a series of our previous articles, the netbook market is expanding at a very fast pace, for which reason a number of manufacturers have announced their intention of joining in. Major companies such as Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Fujitsu and others, have already expressed their interest in entering the netbook market, where they'll compete with names such as ASUS, Acer, MSI and HP. Besides them, a number of relatively unknown manufacturers have come forth with their netbook plans.

Sylvania, a lighting and electric company, which was founded in 1901 with the sole purpose of repairing light bulbs, is expected to release a new netbook of its own. However, such plans haven't gone unnoticed by the media, and journalists from Laptop magazine went ahead and investigated the matter. From the looks of it, the Sylvania netbook isn't actually a product of the electric company, as we mentioned earlier, but of Digital Gadgets, an OEM of consumer electronic products and accessories which has licensed the Sylvania brand for its netbooks.

"Sylvania is a living brand. We aren't just a heritage brand. We continue to be a dynamic living brand and these new netbooks allow us to connect with new generation of consumers," Sylvania's Chief Corporate Spokesman Stephanie J. Anderson stated.

All company info aside, the Laptop magazine contacted Digital Gadget Managing Partner Paul Goldenberg, who provided them with extensive details on the upcoming netbooks.

According to him, there will be two display-size versions: an 8.9-inch model which will be dubbed MESO and a 10-inch one called MAGNI. Meso will make its debut in August and will sport an Atom processor, 512MB or 1GB of RAM and will ship with Ubuntu Netbook Remix. A Windows XP version will also be available, while pricing is expected to start at $499 for the Windows model and $399 for the Linux one.

The 10-inch version will be made available later in August or early September and will also be powered by an Intel Atom CPU. As the 8.9-inch model, the Magni will come either with an Ubuntu Netbook remix or a Windows XP operating system and will provide 1GB of RAM and 160GB of storage space. No word on pricing, unfortunately.