OCZ Officially Announces DIY Neutrino Netbook

As tired as we may have grown hearing about netbooks, consumers don’t yet seem to have had their fill yet.

OCZ is launching its own netbook offering, called the Neutrino, which promises to bring something unique to the table. Sure, it has the usual Atom 1.6 GHz CPU, Intel 945GSE chipset and 10-inch display but much of the rest of it is up to you.

As we first learned at CeBit, the Neutrino is part of OCZ's DIY product line, which allows the user to upgrade RAM and storage on his or her own without voiding the warranty.

That said, much of the Neutrino’s hardware is already set with the CPU, chipset, display, input devices, Wi-Fi chip, battery and even webcam being standardized. What potential owners would be able to install on their own would be RAM up to 2 GB and storage solutions that run all the way up to a 250 GB SSD. And naturally, without storage users won’t be forced to pay for a license for a pre-installed operating system.

“There are many consumers that desire the blend of essential functionalities and an ultra compact form factor, and our new Neutrino Do-It-Yourself netbooks based on Intel Atom technology allows users to design and configure their very own solution tailored to their unique needs,” commented Alex Mei, CMO of the OCZ Technology Group. “The Neutrino DIY netbook puts the control back in the hands of consumers by allowing them to configure a feature rich netbook with their own memory, storage, and preferred OS into a reasonably priced go-anywhere computing solution.”

The mass storage option of getting a 250 GB SSD into the Neutrino would instantly make it stand out, though at the end of the day, it’s still an Atom-based netbook at heart.

The OCZ Neutrino is shipping now with the skeletal model starting at $269.