LaVie Light: NEC Japan launches new netbook series

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Nec Japan today announced two netbooks [JP], the BL100 and the BL300/310/350, which are completely redesigned and come with Windows XP pre-installed. The new netbooks are part of the NEC LaVie series and are labeled “LaVie Light” because of the BL100 weighing just 1.07 kg and the BL300/310/350 models weighing 1.14kg or 1.32kg, depending on the model.

The BL100 comes with a 16GB SSD (which explains the weight) and has an Atom N270 (1.60GHz) CPU, a 10.1-inch LCD screen, a webcam, 1GB RAM and EEE802.11b/g Wifi on board. It’s only available in white and costs $520 (pictured, available in Japan from Thursday).

The models in the BL300 series feature the same LCD screen but come with an Atom N280 (1.66GHz CPU), a 160GB HDD, 1GB RAM, a webcam, IEEE802.11n Draft2.0/IEEE802.11b/g Wifi and Bluetooth Ver.2.1+EDR. The main difference between the models is the battery life (7.4 hours for the BL350 and 4.2 hours for the BL300/310).

Prices in Japan (available in Japan from Thursday): $725 for the BL350 and BL310, $625 for the BL300 (the 310 comes with Office). No word on plans for overseas markets yet, but there is hope, as Toshiba, for example, now starts thinking about bringing their netbooks to the US market.