jmke

We're sad to say that we're a little disappointed in this crop of Ion netbooks -- we've waited over a year for them to arrive, and, well, it's just not last year anymore. While the $499 Eee PC 1201N is our choice of the group since it doesn't sacrifice performance for added graphics, it still feels dated in some ways: Intel's next generation Pine Trail Atom has just been released and you can get a comparable ULV laptop for just a few more bucks. You'll have to ask yourself if the improved graphics and multimedia capabilities of these machines are worth the decrease in performance and battery life the Ion chipset seems to involve -- and whether that tradeoff is worth an extra $200 over a typical netbook. In the end, we just feel like this is all too little, too late, and maybe NVIDIA knows it too -- Ion 2 is supposedly right around the corner. Let's just hope we don't have to wait another year.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/30/i...m-overcharged/

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