NEC unveils the Versa M500 Centrino notebook

 

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By Alun Williams

Posted on 13 Oct 2003 at 12:55

NEC has announced new value Centrino machines aimed at the business user.

Running on the low-end 1.4GHz Pentium M processor (the 1.3 Pentium M was recently discontinued by Intel), it has a 15.1in XGA+ display, 256MB of SDRAM, a 40GB hard drive and a combo DVD/CD-RW optical drive.

For a Centrino, the 3.67cm thin machine is not the lightest laptop - weighing 2.6kg - but NEC claims a battery life of up to four and a half hours. As standard for Centrino models, it has built-in support for wireless networking (802.11b).

As well as a Firewire and four USB ports, the Versa M500 features a 4-in-1-card reader accepting Secure Digital (SD), MultiMedia Card (MMC), SmartMedia (SM) and Memory Stick (MS) cards. There is also one Type II PCMCIA card slot. For extra security the machine also has a Kensington slot.

The OS is XP Professional Edition and bundled software includes Norton AntiVirus 2002 and Microsoft Works 7.

Described as being for 'price conscious' business users, the Versa M500 costs from £979 (ex VAT). More details on the spec can be found on the NEC website.

'An important addition to NEC's existing line-up of award-winning Versa notebooks, the Versa M500 reflects NEC's focus on delivering solutions adapted to today's corporate computing environments,' said Chuck Wearing, product manager with NEC Computers (UK).