HP Releases Ion based netbooks

Vendors are now gearing up for the upcoming launch of Windows 7 on October 22 and as such, computer models built and loaded with Windows 7 are on it’s way.

The HP Ion based netbooks, Mini 311, are the first netbooks who are using the NVidia’s ION platform. The ION platform is based on GeForce 9400M GPU and should give the shrinked laptops a big performance boost. The downside on this is the battery life which could easily be drained because of the power consumption of the graphics card.

According to NVidia, there would be around 50 products that would be released using its ION technology; however, most of these products are net-tops. Samsung, Lenovo and HP are the few vendors that have already confirmed releasing ION based netbooks. Lenovo didn’t come through with its supposedly IdeaPad S12 ION netbook and later said they would just wait for Windows 7 before releasing a netbooks with ION on it. Samsung is in the same boat as that of Lenovo who is also expected to wait for Win 7 before putting out ION netbook.

HP is leading the pack as they have now released a netbook with ION on it despite having Windows XP as its operating system. The gripe I have with this netbook is its usage of LE edition which is the lite version of the ION technology. This lite version doesn’t support DirectX 10 and is built for Windows XP. It is not clear whether this netbook can perform well enough when installed with Windows 7. If I were a buyer, I would just wait a month from now before buying a Windows 7 powered, ION based netbook from either Lenovo or Samsung.

The Mini 311 is priced at around $ 400 USD and specs are the following:

1. 11.6-inch display (1366×768)

2. 1.60GHz Intel Atom N270

3. 1GB of memory

4. 160GB hard drive

5. Windows XP Home SP3.

These ION netbooks would be available starting September 23, and on October 18, HP would start shipping out Mini 311 with Windows 7 Premium at $ 475 USD.

Image from HP.