Sprint Unveils Laptop Lineup for WiMAX

Last week at a launch event in Baltimore, Barry West, president of the Xohm Business Unit for Sprint (News - Alert) Nextel, said there were going to be about 12 laptops with WiMAX capabilities by December and 20 devices in the pipeline.

 

Those devices have been unveiled and the lineup of laptops running on Sprint’s WiMAX service include two Acer Aspire models, three from Asus, a slew of Lenovo (News - Alert) Thinkpad models and Toshiba’s Satellite U405-ST55OW model.

 

This was confirmed by a spokeswoman from Intel, one of the investors in the new Clearwire (News - Alert), which was announced in May and is expected to close at year’s end. The new Clearwire will be a joint venture between Clearwire and Srint Nextel’s WiMAX business with a $3.2 billion investment from Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner (News - Alert) and others.

 

Dell’s Latitude “E” line will run on WiMAX. Dell has not said what specific laptops will run on WiMAX and has only expressed general support for the technology, the spokeswoman said.

 

One of the new computers is the Acer Aspire 4930-6862 – a 14-inch multimedia laptop that runs on the Intel (News - Alert) Core 2 Duo T7350 and has 3GB of memory and a 250 GB hard drive. It debuts for $899.

 

The Acer Aspire 6930-6771 is equipped with a 16-inch screen plus a 16-by-9 aspect ration. It runs on the Intel Core 2 Duo T7350, loads 3GB of memory and uses a fast 320 GB hard drive.

 

The Asus F8Va-C2WM includes the company’s Infusion technology, which guards against scratches and dings. It runs on the Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 processor and has 4GB of memory and a 320GB hard drive. Pricing starts at $1,599.

 

Asus N50Vn is a media center laptop incorporating Blu-ray technology. It runs on the Intel Centrino 2 P8400 processor and has 4GB of memory, a 250GB hard drive and an Nvidia 9600M graphics card. Pricing starts at $1,399.

 

Sprint Nextel Corporation is a telecommunications company, based in Overland Park, Kansas. The company owns and operates the third largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States, with nearly 52 million customers, behind AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless. Sprint is a global Internet carrier and makes up a portion of the Internet backbone.