Onkyo yesterday announced in Japan [JP] that it will enter the market for low-priced notebooks, starting with a Sotec machine, which is priced at about $570. The so-called DC101 minimum PC will be released in this country October 3.

The notebook features a 10.1-inch display (backlighted, resolution: 1024×600), 1GB of memory, a 120GB hard disk, an Atom N270 CPU (1.60GHz), a 1.3 megapixel web camera, a memory card slot and one USB port. It comes with Windows XP pre-installed and operates for about 2 hours on a fully charged battery.

The Sotec notebook will be available in white or black and weighs 1.2kg. Onkyo will also offer a more expensive version ($760) with Microsoft Office installed.