good enough for my parents
how about the pricing?

I've helped a couple friends pick out their netbooks, but haven't bought one myself. This might finally be the one that I buy... if the price is right. An SSD larger than 8GB would be preferable, but I'm guessing since it's Ion Asus figures people will want more room to rip their movies etc

Excellent! Any idea on the price?

This would work for my wife or my mom but not for me.
It needs more juice!
I want 8 cores
16 GB o RAM
and a video card that gets awesome frame rates in ALL games!

would be nice if it came with a burner!

It is a netbook - not a notebook.

Looks like a great design!
The bump in resolution, large battery life, and the increase in 3D performance all look very delicious!

The Cons would be:
Too large bezel around the screen
Glossy finish
Too large screen size! I'd prefer a 1280*720 resolution @ 9 or 10" over a 1366x768 resolution on a 12" device!
Also a pity they didn't go with an Atom N280 instead, though that may bump up the price, and lower battery life.

Of the 11hours promoted of battery life, I guess 7 hours will be the best we'll get browsing.
Also the GPU is stronger than intel's integrated graphics chip, which means gaming on a device like this might result in lower battery life than the intel variant.

Because it's a 12" device, we'll probably not see this launched under $399.
That's why I'd prefer this laptop (with smaller bezel, and an Atom N280) with a 10" screen, which can be gotten for under $300 in the right stores!

It's launchtime is probably also pretty bad, seeing that in 3 months, intel will come up with a new chip, and probably most people are waiting for these laptops!
Although I'd say this 12" version might outperform intel's upcoming netbooks in 3D gaming experience!

My going theory is that Netbooks are so popular because they are finally the machine we have been waiting for.
That is - they are the personal assistant that actually works.
We have been through the original palm, smart phones, and various tiny computers.
Now the Netbooks actually do the things we always wanted those to do.
This latest version breaks that mold - it's just too big.
It's not ultra portable anymore. Why bother?

This may fill a role as the "mom-in-law" machine - but that is a smaller audience.
Everyone can use a cool Netbook - not everyone needs one you can't carry with you.

I am confused. They said that this thing has nVidia "ION" but when they list the specs they have the nVidia 9400M. Isn't that 9400M just a laptop mobile chip? Or is this particular 9400M a smaller die size which they put under the ION moniker?

Am I right to be confused? or am I just reading stuff completely wrong?

Nice specs.

I would buy one. For US$450 tops.

Looking pretty spiffy, been seeing a lot of attractive netbooks coming out lately. Maybe that will drive down the prices of the good ones...?

At a netbook I wonder first about the weight and the thickness. Do you know them?

Atom Inside = Still painfully slow. I'd much rather have some of AMD's new ultra-thin notebooks.

I though Intel was bullying companies into keeping the screens smaller than 12 inches?

I realize it's a "netbook" and price is a driving factor, but I would much rather see a Core 2 Duo Mobile SU9600 (1.6Ghz, 3MB L2, 10W TDP) ULV CPU in this machine. Should be 2x-4x the speed of the Atom N270 and still offer 7+ hours of run-time. The SU9600 also supports VT and EM-64T, which combined with the Nvidia 9400M chipset would make an extremely useful machine (think MacBook Air like at 1/2 the price).

rule of bad design #1

The percentage of bezel width to screen is way to big. If you are going to make a mistake like that, at least try and hide it with a glass screen that covers the whole thing.

Sweet, must look closer into this but I still think I will pick this thin and light poor mans air up for $550.
Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810TZ-4880 13.3-Inch Laptop - 8+ Hour Battery Life
The Acer has 4Gb of DDR3 and 1366 x 768. The Asus beats it in graphics, the Acer has intel 4500 but the Acer has it on the processor using a new ultra low voltage P4 chip at 1.3GHz.

11 hours of battery my a@$.

Why does everyone whine about battery life. Are all of you watching movies with these on 12 hour trips? A battery life of 5 hours or more is fantastic! My 19 inch laptop will go 2.5 hours and I've never drained it. There's always a plug somewhere. I can even watch a full x264 movie with batt life to spare. Does the rule of ultra portable mean you can't bring the power supply?

If this is

I hate to say it but the display is still too small for grandma's poor old tired eyes.

11 hours sounds unlikely if the 10" eepc max out at 10.5hours with slimmer graphics

The screen will not be exactly 12 inches, but 11.6 screen like the Ferrari netbook? What the hell is the definition of a netbook now? Come on people, just give up and call it a ultra-portable laptop. 12 inches is usually bigger then most books, so why call it a netBOOK!

I've linked to it before, and I'll probably link to this again, but I bought this MSi Wind U210 with AMD MV-40 1.6GHz 64bit Athlon Neo processor, and x1270 AMD GPU. The battery life is shorter than what the Atom computers claim, but I can still get 4+ hours from a full charge. Price is $430 from Newegg.

The size is about perfect, and the keyboard is almost full size for a laptop (most of the alphanumerics are normal but flat, and the special keys on the right feel cramped - which makes LaTeX a little less easy). In fact, I can keep it in the front pocket of my messenger-style laptop bag, and keep my books in the main compartment (Math grad student).

Also, Ubuntu Intrepid 64bit works exceedingly well on it, though I haven't taken the time yet to figure out the wireless card (works perfectly in Vista (also comes with free Windows 7 Upgrade (nested parens!)) but Linux and the Realtek 8168/8111 card don't get along out of the box).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 1&Tpk=U210

Thanks for the article, but there's one thing I'd like to see from this site: calling out netbook/laptop makers on the choice of high-gloss screens and bezels! These are completely useless outdoors and an annoyance in rooms that have big windows on more than one wall!

I'd say that the Atom class of processors are more a defining factor of what a netbook is, rather than

I sure hope this comes with hdmi not just vga out...
Having the capability of watching HD and not have an hdmi to see it on a big screen seems like a waste