Acer, which has been focusing on the consumer market and fighting for space in retail stores, is turning its attention back to the North American small- and midsized-business market. On Dec. 20, the Taiwan PC vendor announced that it would begin selling its low-cost Extensa 4620 notebook into the North American market for the first time. The 14.1-inch laptops come equipped with either an Intel Core 2 Duo or a Pentium dual-core processor. Acer, which has its U.S. headquarters in San Jose, Calif., is also keeping its prices down for the Extensa notebooks. The Pentium-based laptop starts at $699 and the Core 2 Duo machine starts at $799, according to Acer. The aggressive pricing of these SMB notebooks should allow Acer to continue competing against the bigger names in the market-in particular, Hewlett-Packard and Dell-as well as against other Asian-based PC vendors, such as Toshiba.