Netbook Reviews

Just yesterday Intel officially announced the availability of their new dual core Intel Atom N550 processor.

In the press announcement they also said that a dozen netbooks powered by the new Atom N500 processor are already available to purchase.

Well, as of right now, that isn’t exactly true, as there certainly isn’t a dozen right now. But we do know of a number of upcoming netbooks which are powered by the dual core N550 processor.

There are a number of reports and rumors flying around the Internet right now suggesting that Intel maybe working on a Dual Core Atom chip for netbooks, which may be called the Intel Atom N550.

Intel’s low power consumption Atom processors are divided into two categories, those for Nettops, and those for netbooks.

Update: The dual core Intel Atom N550 processor is now available, more news below!

The big name battery brand, Duracell, are getting into the netbook market in some way by launching their universal netbook adapter.

The Duracell universal netbook charger is said to work with all popular netbooks from Acer, Asus, Dell HP / Compaq, Lenovo and even more.

The 40-watt power adapter comes with four power tip which can be easily changed to fit these netbooks. It automatically switches from 12v – 19v depending on the netbooks needs.

As I’m sure you know, Intel are the kings of the netbook processor. Multiple variations of their Atom processor are found in 95% or so of all current and previous netbooks.

We are starting to see a few more netbook models on the market which make use of AMD’s hardware (E.g Acer Aspire One 521), but they are still very few and far between.

AMD are now looking to gain more of the netbook market share with their new AMD Ontario processor.

So you own a nice small netbook? The last thing you want is a huge USB Flash drive sticking out of it.

SanDisk have just launched their very small Cruzer Blade USB Flash drive. While we doubt it is the world’s smallest USB flash drive, it is SanDisk’s smallest. They say it’s about the size of a paper clip.

Mine arrived today, and I thought I would take some shots of it in use to show its small size.

If you’re looking to move away from Windows as an operating system or simply looking to try something different, Jolicloud would be a great OS to start with.

It can be installed simply from Windows, or directly from ISO, and sit alongside your Windows installation as a dual boot option.

Jolicloud has been designed especially for netbooks, and they are just about to release version 1.0 of their operating system. Current uses will receive an automatic update over the next week or so.

It has been a couple of years since Apple launched their MacBook Air laptop. Ever since then Apple has expressed little to no interested in netbooks. But they did of course release the iPad, a device which small, light and has long battery life, but of course no keyboard or full operating system.

So the closet thing Apple has to a netbook is their MacBook air, even though it will costs a good 3-5 times as much.

Now according to Digitimes, Apple is set to release a new MacBook Air with a smaller 11.6-inch display and a slimmer / lighter design that the original versions.

This site is clearly about Netbooks, but with the ever increasing number of tablets / pads and related news, we would like to know your opinion.

So we thought we would ask our readers, you, whether we should stick to just posting about netbooks, or also throw in some tablet news every now and then.

So far we have been concentrating on just netbooks, with a major tablet story here and there.

Let us know what you think via the poll below!

Over the next few months we should be seeing more and more netbooks making use of the latest generation of dual core Intel Atom processors, the Intel Atom N550.

The Intel Atom N550 runs at 1.5Ghz and has two physical cores, and can run four threads. While this sounds great, how does it actually perform on a netbook?

Intel has made the next generation Intel Atom processors and platforms official and have even shown off a next generation ultra thin netbook.

We have already see the new dual core Intel Atom N550 1.5GHz (with DDR3 support, and a 8.5W TDP) show up in the Asus Eee PC 1015N, which is due in the Q3 this year. But it’s great to see it made official.