Freescale Semiconductor planning 1GHz, low-power netbook chip

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At CES this week, chip makers Freescale Semiconductor will be launching a ARM chip architecture-based i.MX51 processor, that Freescale reckon could bring about $199 (£140ish) 1GHz netbooks. It’ll be a competitor to Intel’s Atom chip, which powers many of the netbooks in the market today.

However, Freescale don’t see themselves as competing with Intel, because their product is targeted at the lower end of the market, with machines running Linux rather than Windows XP. You’ll start to see machines with these chips in entering production towards the middle of the year, and showing up to buy in time for Christmas 2009.

Freescale Semiconductor (via Cnet)

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Nvidia reveals Ion Platform which could bring high-definition and high powered gaming to netbooks

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Nvidia has unveiled its Ion Platform, based upon the GeForce 9400, claiming that if it were to be put into an Intel Atom-based netbook it could allow high definition footage and high-powered games to run with ease.

Nvidia reckons that the GeForce 9400 offers up to ten times the performance of the integrated graphics solution that comes with the Atom chip, featuring 16 processing cores and 52 GLOPS of processing power. Therein lies the problem, though: Intel’s Atom comes with its own integrated graphics, so separating it and allowing other manufacturers to sell their own GPUs along with the main processor is going to require some lobbying of Intel…

Cram OS X on your netbook – compatibility chart

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Okay, hold up. You know that netbook of yours? With the tiny screen, and CD drive? What you wanna do with that, right, is put a banging donk on it. And once you’ve finished, you might think about installing OS X.

Rob Beschizza over at BoingBoing Gadgets has put together an awesome compatibility chart of which bits work with which netbooks on OS X.

Of course, it goes without saying that you’re going to need a dodgy copy of OS X, and you’ll need to be pretty comfortable with using the command line, too. The best little machines for the job? The Dell Mini 9 and the MSI Wind.

OS X Compatibility Chart

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Shiny Video Review: Advent 4213 Netbook

Zara got her hands on the Advent 4213 netbook the other day, and she liked it a lot. For me though, it seems to be trying to be a full-size laptop, rather than a diminutive netbook. It’s got a 10.2″ screen, a massive hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and it runs Windows XP – three things which I avoided when buying my Aspire One netbook a couple of months ago.

Still, if you’re not the sort of person who wants the full-on Linux-and-SSD netbook experience, then perhaps it’s for you. Check out the video above to see.

Advent UK

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Good OS launches gOS Cloud – a tiny cloud operating system

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Good OS, or gOS, is a company that makes custom Linux distributions, and it’s just released gOS Cloud – a very stripped-down distro that promises to load a web browser (which looks suspiciously like Chrome) in a matter of seconds. You get an OS X-style dock launcher for opening web apps, and Skype’s being mentioned too – which seems to indicate that it can load non-browser-based applications, too.

The OS is designed to boot alongside Windows, and the company is working with netbook makers to produce an ultraportable which runs both this and XP. Look out for that early next year, and perhaps a release of the OS in the meantime.

Good OS (via DownloadSquad)

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Lenovo promises two new netbooks – S9e and S10e

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The hail of netbooks continues as Lenovo updates its S10 Ideapad netbook with ‘Splashtop’ capabilities. This is a rather nifty little facility that makes the netbook very nearly ‘instant-on’. This means that basic email, IM and internet tasks can be accomplished within seconds of pressing the power button, though to do more complex stuff you need to boot into Windows.

Similarly, the S9e is an update of the S9, and adds the same ‘Splashtop’ functionality to the existing model. Both updates feature identical specs to their originals, but have the new instant-on Linux OS which dual-boots with Windows. The S10e will cost 299 pounds, but I can’t seem to find anywhere how much the S9e will cost. If you know, then drop us a line in the comments.

Lenovo (via PC Advisor)

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More netbook competition on its way as Ubuntu embraces ARM processors

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A version of Ubuntu, the popular Linux distribution, will be developed for the ARMv7 processor, Canonical announced last week.

This could bring to market netbooks and other portable devices based on the more energy-efficient ARM processors, and challenge both Intel and AMD.

The Ubuntu Linux netbook version will be officially available from April next year. ARM processors are already used in mobile phones such as the iPhone and G1…