MSI to Launch MacBook Air Competitor with Regular CPU

It looks like the 13.4″ MSI X-Slim X320 won’t be going up against the 13.3″ Apple MacBook Air after all. The MacBook Air has a full (albeit lower voltage) Intel Core 2 Duo powering it, versus the single-core Intel Atom powering the X320, leaving the … Read more

Intel to Produce CPU for Thin and Light Laptops

According to CNET sources, Intel will be rolling out a new CPU later this year, targeted towards cheaper laptops that are just above netbooks in specifications, pricing, and size, but below some of the more expensive high-end thin and light laptops (such as the 12.1″ … Read more

NVidia Brings GeForce 9400M to Atom Platform

Although they are initially talking about “nettops” (aka desktop versions of netbooks), this is still interesting news. Intel and NVidia are going to work together to help NVidia adapt their MCP79 (9400M) GeForce chipset to the Intel Atom platform. This would be a huge boost … Read more

Intel Plans 32nm Atom for Netbooks

Intel is planning on releasing a major upgrade to it’s Atom CPU series sometime in 2010, according to their latest roadmap. It’s dubbed “Medfield” and it will be 32nm, as opposed to the current 45nm Atoms (currently “Diamondville”, “Pineview” in 2009). Part of this process … Read more

Netbook CPUs: ARM, AMD (Conesus/Yukon), Dual-Core Atom

AMD There were several major CPU-related announcements for netbooks released over the past few days, along with some more information about dual-core Atoms and how they might potentially fare in netbooks.

ARM is going to use the ARMv7 architecture to make ARM Cortex-A8 and A9-based netbooks and MIDS. They are going to work with Canonical on an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution specifically for these systems. They are known for being able to handle some forms of high-definition video as well as long battery life in existing PDAs / smart phones. LAPTOP Magazine reports that they are interested in 8.9″ and 10.2″ netbooks. We’ll see more about this towards April of 2009 as the ARM Ubuntu distribution is released, as well as more information. (Press Release via LAPTOP Magazine

Next up, PC Pro has benchmarked the dual-core Atom 330, and even though it was on a desktop form factor, they made comparisons to single-core Atoms on netbooks (since some of the involved factors, including the chipset, were identical).

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