I’ve just returned from the UK launch of the Aspire One, helpfully held within spitting distance of the PC Pro offices, where Acer announced that its new low-cost notebook will be hitting shelves on July the 10th.

The first model will cost just £199, including VAT – placing it in direct competition with the Eee PC. However, direct competition with the Eee PC is a very crowded place to be right now, and Acer has taken its time to get there.

Luckily, from what I saw, it trumps most others on features. The 8.9in screen displays 1,024 by 600 pixels, giving plenty more real estate than the Eee’s 800 by 480, and the sub-£200 One also doubles its 4GB of internal storage.

Just like the Eee, the notebook runs a modified version of Linux with a bespoke front-end. Rather than the Eee’s many-tabbed menu, though, the One has just one, which handily displays the number of emails and IMs received.

Playing with the software yielded few surprises; a version of Open Office handles office tasks, just as with the Eee. The unusual supplied email client did stand out; gathering up to 6 accounts (webmail or otherwise) into one inbox. Unfortunately, I only got five minutes with the device, so was unable to see if this is a useful or a confusing option.

Another bizarre feature is the SD expansion slot – any cards can be treated as an add-on to the internal hard disk, with both showing up in file manager as one drive. It seems like this could pave the way to oodles of lost files and confusion, but Acer claim to have developed some tools to make it all straightforward. Again, we’ll let you know if this is true once we get a longer play with the device.

Battery life is a claimed 3 hours, perhaps a tad optimistic: a quick glimpse of the battery showed it to be just 2,220mAh. Just in case, a larger model will be available that will more than double this to 7 hours, claims Acer.

Windows XP versions are also on the way, but will have a negative impact on battery life as well as price. An Acer spokesperson admitted that, “to be honest, we’d prefer not to sell XP”, begging the question; why are they?

Of course, that figure is helped in no small part by Intel’s new Atom processor, which may not be the fastest chip we’ve seen in recent months, but is very frugal with power. The first versions will include the N270 1.6GHz chip, similar to the N230 we recently reviewed in the Tranquil T2e Atom PC.

Aside from all this, the One is very impressive; a well designed chassis, sub 1kg weight and boot up and shut down times that only slightly overrun the claimed figures of 15 seconds and 5 seconds respectively. Acer may have taken its time attempting to catch up in this rapidly emerging market, but it’s done it properly from what I’ve seen.