Intel ships updated Atom chips six months early

Intel has confirmed it is already shipping the next incarnation of the Atom processor. The chip maker's successor to the near-ubiquitous netbook chip, the N270, is landing in the hands of laptop makers well before the anticipated mid-2009 release. Those presently mulling a netbook purchase may want to hold off for a bit. …

[Anonymous Coward]

haha!

My mate was just bugging me today to help him pick a netbook. I told him to put his money in the bank and wait til the next gen!

[Emo]

Quick Google for N280

Shows then due in stock on 23rd of feb.

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_One_D150b_in_White_Netbook_LU.S550B.069/version.asp?refsource=ldfroogle

[Anonymous Coward]

always something better around the corner...

Put your money in the bank and it'll earn nothing. Buy an Aspire One 150 Linux from Asda for £150 (if they have any left) and not only will you be able to use it now, for half the price of the new ones.

But will this new CPU/chipset allow these machines to be fanless?

[Flocke Kroes]

North bridge power

Atom was a waste of space because the northbridge took so much power. I have seen lots of speculation about GN40, but nothing decisive about power dissipation. Anyone got real measurements?

Assess you requirements, then pick your CPU. If you want a fast netbook: Via Nano. If you want battery life: ARM or MIPS. If you want an expensive netbook: Intel Atom.

[Craig]

About time they...

Stopped sodding around with hyperthreading. Got one of the Asus 900 netbooks, it's great but it runs hot as hell and could really use dual core.

Would have thought they'd learn their lesson after the P4 disaster.

[Matt Bryant]

Dual-core or MP Atom, please!

What I'm looking forward to is a dual-core Atom for thin-clients and an MP Atom so we can slap four dual-core into a low-power blade for virtualising the same OS and apps we currently push into VMware instances.

[Rob Beard]

Cheaper Atom 270's?

So does this mean the Atom N270 will get a bit cheaper?

I'm considering getting one (not a netbook, but an Atom motherboard) but they're so pricey I'm probably going to get a Sempron instead.

That new Aspire One is a bit pricey too, sure it has a 10" screen but it's getting close to cheap notebook prices.

Rob

[Anonymous Coward]

So this GN40...

What's the power consumption like?

[David Hicks]

So what happened to the dual core Atom?

I thought the next Atom release was going to be a dual core version?

What's happened to that one?

[Austin Modine]

Re: So this GN40...

@Bracken

The N280 has a TDP of 2W, down from the N270's 2.5W.

Will update with the info.