Unless you've been in drug rehab for the last week, rumours and leaked pictures have been circulating the internet of Acer's answer to Asus eee PC (see our eee PC review). Now the company has finally gone public and revealed to a waiting world something we had pictures of last week.

Down at the plush Sanderson Hotel in London's West End, Acer revealed its attempt to muscle in on this booming market with its Aspire One. The device is called a "mobile internet device", which presumably means you can use it whilethetelly is on in the background. It is one of the first mini-laptops to feature Intel's new energy sipping, low-power Atom processor. It also has a slightly smaller "95 percent"-sized keyboard and an 8.9-inch display.

The device also weighs less than a bag of sugar (1 kilo) and can run both Linux or Windows XP. The £199 version of the "netbook" comes with a 8GB solid state disk (the more expensive version has a 80GB normal hard drive). It not only sports Wi-Fi but will be able to use Wimax or 3G mobile broadband as well.

There is also an SD slot for memory expansion and two battery variants – a 3-cell that Acer claims will give three hours of battery life and a 7-cell version for a whopping seven hours. Knock some time off if you’re buying a Windows XP version.

More pictures on next page...