Asus unveils no-frills K Series Domino laptops

Designed for multimedia performance without the cost

Asus K Series sport Altec Lansing speakers and screens up to 17.3in

Asus, best known for its Eee PC that kick-started the compact netbook craze, has turned its attention to no-frills laptops with more mainstream 15in and 17in display sizes.

Available immediately, the Asus K Series Domino collection laptops are designed to provide multimedia performance and computing versatility without any extra fuss or additional cost, the company said.

The new models feature high definition 15.6in or 17.3in displays with a 16:9 ratio designed for watching movies, plus SRS Premium Sound and Altec Lansing speakers.

All the models are based on Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 or Pentium Duo Core T4200 processors, with up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, 1.3 Megapixel webcam, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and 250Gb or 320GB Sata hard drives.

The 17.3in K70IO and 15.6in K50IN models both additionally feature Nvidia's GeForce G102M graphics accelerator with 512MB of dedicated graphics memory, while the K50IJ relies on the graphics functions of its Intel chipset.

All models ship with Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows Vista Home Premium. The K50IN retails at £599 inc VAT and the the K50IJ is £469, said Asus.