This news from DigiTimes doesn’t change time frames dramatically, but if you expected to see any next-generation Intel Atom netbooks in 2009, plan to wait just a wee bit more. Originally, there was talk of some vendors — MSI, in particular — offering netbooks with the new Pine Trail platform this month, but Intel has apparently put the kibosh on that. It’s now expected that you won’t be able to purchase one of these devices until Jan. 11, which is the first business day after the Consumer Electronics Show.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we won’t see dozens of new netbooks at CES with the N450 Atom. I fully expect we will — after all, vendors showing new devices with the N270 or N280 Atom aren’t going to gain much attention these days. DigiTimes expects the systems to be available with Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 7 Starter Edition and the Intel-backed Moblin environment. I’m wondering how much longer Microsoft will sell the XP licenses to OEMs, now that Windows 7 is gaining steam — it already has more market share than Mac OS X and its adoption rate is higher than Vista’s was.
DigiTimes also mentions some inventory pileups of the current netbooks, but I’m scratching my head over this one. Didn’t these hardware makers know that the new Atom chipset was due around this time? As far as I know, demand for today’s netbooks hasn’t dried up and left tons of inventory, so I’m at a loss when it comes to understanding these “pileups.” It’s likely there are some excess netbooks on shelves and in warehouses, but if they’re priced right, they’ll move. That means if you don’t mind a netbook with the current hardware, you just might find some great deals between now and the end of January.
If you’d rather wait or get a device with newer guts, the fanless Atom N450 systems will give you the same general processing power as the N280, but take up less space and use less juice. Intel is moving to two chips from three and expects a 20 percent power savings, says Fudzilla. Bear in mind, that’s not a 20 percent savings for the entire netbook, just the chipset, so don’t expect a massive increase in battery life. I’m interested to see improvements in the graphics capabilities for this new Atom platform, but I’ll have to wait until early January to find out for sure.

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