HP Atom-Based 10″ Netbook Rumors

HP 2133 Mini-Note In a semi-related story to one from a few weeks ago, DigiTimes is reporting that Inventec will be manufacturing a new netbook for HP, a follow-up to their HP 2133 Mini-Note that would be sporting an Intel Atom CPU, and two, count them, two 10-inch displays.

One display would be 10.2-inches and targeted towards consumers, with a release date of October (this year).

The other display would be 10.1-inches with a Solid State Drive (SSD) or conventional drive and a resolution of 1024×576. It would be launched in the first quarter of 2009 and geared towards business / enterprise use.

My thoughts: While it’s certainly possible that HP could be working on an Atom-based system, with a 10-inch panel, I don’t see them using two different sized panels that are that close in size. I would also see them taking a look at VIA’s Nano CPUs since those are drop-in replacements for the current VIA C7M CPUs in the 2133s.

It’s one thing to have an 8.9-inch panel in a chassis made for a 10.2-inch panel – that’s now a normal thing these days, but another to have two panels that close. They mention a shortage of 10-inch panels being the reason for the delays as well. That could certainly be true, but if they are going to wait that long and switch to Intel, might as well use the dual-core Intel Atoms that will be available (especially for the enterprise model).

I think there could be some truth to part of the rumors – if they do in fact have two different 10-inch panels, I think they would have two different designs (one consumer, one enterprise based) or at least enough of a difference design-wise not to confuse people and companies.

Read: DigiTimes