Acer's 10-inch Aspire One Coming With XP, Linux

Acer's 8.9-inch Aspire One was perfectly suitable for those scouting one of the smallest netbooks on the market, but Acer realized that not everyone wants a machine that's small enough to slide into the average cargo pocket. To that end, the company is planning to release a 10-inch version in the not-too-distant future.

We've learned that the 10-inch Aspire One will eventually arrive with Windows XP, a 160GB hard drive, a 1,024 x 600 resolution display, 1GB of RAM, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and a three cell battery. According to ZDNet's UK branch, an Acer spokesperson has chimed in to add that a Linux version will also be made available. To quote him specifically, the 10-inch Aspire One "will be available with XP or Linux, and HDD or SSD." The Linux model will utilize a Linux distribution dubbed Linpus, and the base SSD will be 16GB; unfortunately, these "increased storage capacities" have eliminated the second SD card slot, which was available on the 8.9-inch variant in order to act as a supplement to the hard drive.

There's no US ship date or price just yet, but we wouldn't be shocked to hear those critical details unveiled at CeBIT (if not before).