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Optima OP5-W is a thin and light Laptop that costs only $350, manufactured by Chinese manufacturer http://www.chinaoptima.com with Intel Atom N280 1.66ghz, 1GB ram (or 2GB ram for $18 more), 160GB hard drive (or more if demanded), 1.3mpix webcam, 2xUSB, mini-HDMI output integrated.

While Dell has ended the sale of their Dell Mini 12 netbook, while Lenovo S12 (with Nvidia Ion) and Samsung NC20 (VIA based) cost over $450, and Asus 1201HA has somewhat lower specs (1.33GHz Atom Z520 processor), this Optima OP5-W is a cheaper alternative for a 12.1″ netbook size. 12.1″ is a significantly larger computing experience, with more confortable screen and keyboard size for the productive adult laptop user.

The clue might be that Intel and Microsoft may have recently relaxed the rules governing the limitation of screen and keyboard size for the use and cheap licencing of Windows XP Home and the use of the cheap Netbook Intel Atom N280 processor. While I am not sure if Microsoft allows 12.1″ cheap Netbook edition Windows XP licencing, they use to not allow it for not cannibalizing the existing notebook sales profit margins, they may be allowing it now.

Battery life test:

The screen is quite bright, while the battery is not removable easily (screws are needed), I have tested the full 100% brightness, 100% speaker volume and constant video streaming over WiFi from http://live.twit.tv, the battery lasted about 1 hour 30 minutes. I have not yet tested the battery life in minimum screen brightness, low headphones volume and non-WiFi use with a light OS that doesn’t have a lot of active background processes.

Software test:

This Optima OP5-W does not currently support WiFi usage on Chromium OS. Though, I believe this could rather easilly be fixed in a driver patch update of a Chromium OS image. So if you would want to order large quantities of this hardware with a 8GB flash storage memory instead of 160GB hard drive, you may as well save another $30 on the retail price. This means, that using these hardware specifications, an Intel Atom powered Chrome OS laptop with a 12.1″ screen could be sold close to or below $300, also consider that Google can subsidize the price of the Laptop towards Laptop manufacturers by paying the manufacturers or laptop selling brands a percentage of the revenue generated from Google’s advertising.

Consider also that the Optima OP5-W is a very interesting demonstration of the user experience that one could expect from a similar design for a laptop, same sized screen and keyboard but based on a lower power ARM Cortex A8 or ARM Cortex A9 processor, a Pixel Qi LCD screen (now being manufactured) with lower power consumption in full backlit color mode and also with a much lower power black and white mode. I expect that the ARM version of this 12.1″ sized laptop running Chrome OS and a fully usable Chrome browser to be sold below $200.