The success of the Asus Eee PC appears to be prompting a lot of other companies to offer low cost, low profile computers. A few weeks ago Everex announced that it would be launching the Cloudbook in January. And now it looks like Taiwanese PC maker E-Lead is getting into the game with the Noahpad.

Like the Eee PC and Cloudbook, the Noahpad will be a small computer running Linux. Unlike the Eee PC and Cloudbook, the Noahpad will actually come with an operating system you may have heard of and used: Ubuntu 7.10. The machine is also capable of running Windows XP, but you'll have to install it yourself.

The Noahbook will sport a 1GHz Via Eden processor, 512MB or RAM, a 7 inch display and 512MB of RAM, 802.11b/g wireless, and speakers, and a microphone. As you can see from the image, it also has a split-keyboard. I've never particularly been fond of full-sized split keyboards, and I kind of wonder how easy it will be to type on a tiny one.

No word on how much the Noahpad will cost or when it will be available, but we'll probably get a whole lot of details sometime next week when E-Lead shows the Noahpad off at CES.

[via Engadget]