Packard Bell sneaks into Santa Rosa with the EasyNote SB85 and SB86

While the name Packard Bell usually just conjures up images of hopelessly-broken Windows 95 machines in Radio Shacks, the company has been sold several times since leaving these shores in 1999, and though the specs on the new EasyNote SB line aren't exactly turning us green with envy, they're respectable enough to make us think that current owner Lap Shun Hui knows what he's doing. Both the EasyNote SB85 and SB86 feature Intel's Centrino Duo chipset with 802.11n support, 15.4-inch screens with integrated 1.3 megapixel webcams, 2GB of RAM, dual layer DVD±RW drives, and HDMI ports. The lower-end SB85 will set our European friends back €1199 ($1624) and comes with a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo T7100, a 256MB GeForce 8600M GS, and a 160GB drive, while the €1499 ($2029) SB86 ups the processor to a 2GHz T7300 and the video card to a 512MB GeForce 8600 BS, while weirdly dropping the drive size to 120GB. Packard Bell says it'll be dropping the SB line later this month -- we're certain all of Europe is going crazy with anticipation. [Warning: PDF link]

[Via SlashGear]