It's quite a well-known fact that just about every company out there that has even the slightest connection to the area of PC development and manufacturing is trying to capitalize on the hype generated by netbooks, launching their own version of such an ultraportable that, in most cases, resembles quite a lot most of the other similar products existing on the market. And that's also the case with Averatec, who launched back in October 2008 their Buddy netbook, whose overall features and specs are common to just about every and any other similar device one could find on the market.



Averatec's Buddy is a 10.2-inch netbook, equipped with an WXGA Wide Screen LCD with AveraBrite technology. The device delivers an 1024x600 pixels native LCD resolution, is Microsoft DirectX and OpenGL Compliant and also supports multiple displays (LCD and external monitor), while in the same time featuring a side mounted headphone and microphone ports.



At the core of the Buddy we can find the same “old” configuration encountered in oh so many other similar products, namely an Intel Atom mobile processor (533MHz Front Side Bus) running at 1.6Ghz and accompanied by an Intel 945GMS + ICH7 chipset, plus 1 GB of DDR2 memory (533/667 MHz). The storage department has been improved, compared to most of the other similar products existing on the market, since the Buddy incorporates an 160GB SATA HDD (5400 rpm).



The connectivity and networking features are also very familiar, since we're dealing with 10/100 Mbps Ethernet LAN and 802.11b/g modules, plus a host of interfaces, including USB 2.0, microphone and headphone inputs and outputs, a VGA port and a 4-in-1 memory card reader (MS/MS Pro/MMC/SD).



The sales price of the Averatec Buddy netbook is also very common, namely around 480 US dollars, which is exactly the price point at which you'll also find most other similar products existing on the market.