SlashGear

Shuttle are best known for their small-form-factor (SFF) desktop PCs and barebone systems, but according to the latest rumors swirling around the unnamed “market sources” of Taipei they’re considering branching out into netbooks.  To do that, so DigiTimes suggest, they’re not taking the arduous high-road of locking themselves in the lab and seeing what they can come up with, but instead are allegedly planning to poach a 40-strong team from rivals Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS).

Shuttle have experimented with Intel’s Atom processor range, in the shape of the X50 all-in-one desktop, but are yet to venture publicly into netbook hardware.  It’s unclear whether they would offer a barebone design, in which buyers could select and install their own memory, storage and the like, or a more mainstream preconfigured model.

ECS, for their part, are claiming to have “no knowledge of any raid” on their workforce, and are presumably carrying on business-as-usual.  The company are responsible for the OEM manufacturer of many brand-name netbooks, as well as producing their own reference platforms including an Android-based model back at Computex.