Acer Making WiMax Laptop for Sprint

Acer on Monday showed off a new Acer Aspire with a built-in WiMax module that it plans to sell through Sprint Nextel and other companies.

The Acer Aspire 5920 is already being manufactured by notebook PC contract maker Quanta Computer and could be available by the end of this year.

The notebook will be sold along with WiMax service in a manner similar to the way mobile phones are sold along with service packages, said Trisha Pan, a product marketing manager at Acer, on the sidelines of a WiMax news conference in Taipei.

Intel is also buying some of the laptops for testing, said Pan. The laptops will be made available to all WiMax network operators. They won't be out until Sprint or other companies start selling the devices with their WiMax services

Pricing will depend on service plans. The company will reveal more details about the laptop after it officially launches, Pan said.

WiMax is a wireless technology aimed at delivering broadband Internet services without wires to devices everywhere. It's viewed as the successor to Wi-Fi.

Everex Systems showed off a new low-cost laptop PC, the CloudBook Max, at the CTIA Wireless 2008 trade show in Las Vegas early this month, also aimed at Sprint Nextel's Xohm WiMax wireless broadband network.