Nvidia to power Dark Knight on Vista netbooks

Want to play Medal of Honor or enjoy The Dark Knight on a Windows-Vista-powered netbook? Your chance could be coming this summer. Microsoft has certified drivers for Windows Vista Home Premium for use with Nvidia's small and sexy ION graphics acceleration platform, which juices netbook performance. The development means games …

[Henry Wertz]

Blah to Vista

"What many people call a ‘netbook’ today is really a small notebook, and users expect it to perform like one"

And they do if you don't put Vista on them. Preferably Ubuntu or "Ubuntu Netbook Remix" instead.

A NVidia9400+Atom combo (which is what ION is) is interesting and should be quite the setup but I'm sure not going to squander it by running Vista on it!

[null]

Huh?

This seems kinda counter-intuitive to me. Aren't netbooks called netbooks because they're only powerful enough to perform some basic tasks like accessing the the web? Wouldn't they be better off making it less powerful and selling it for a lower price? Are gamers really going to buy a netbook to play Medal of Honor? Why would you want to run Vista, that bloated pig, on a netbook? (I'm running it on a mid-range notebook and it's clunky enough). I'm confused.

[alzain]

Heh

This is called evolution and ION may be a step forward or a step back,We will see when it is in mass production

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista netbook? HP tried that...

and it was about as successful as a cast-iron balloon.

Part of the reason for the swing to netbooks is that these days it is the only way that end-users can buy themselves a machine with XP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blu-Ray on a Netbook ?

Apologies if I am missing something, but ....

- why do I need hi-def movie content on a 10" netbook screen ?

- also, netbooks lack optical drives, so how do I legitimately get the media content across to my netbook?

I don't see how the announcement benefits those who use netbooks for business or office use, or browsing for that matter.

[Pascal Monett]

Re:why do I need hi-def movie content on a 10" netbook screen

Get with the progam, mister. You need it because we say so. And when you get wristwatches with 2048x1600 pixels, we'll make sure it has a Blu-Ray drive so you can watch you favorite space opera while getting a cramp in your arm.

Now go and pay your voluntary contribution to the Save The RIAA fund. If you don't know where to go, don't worry, a friendly RIAA SWAT team is waiting just around the corner with a lawyer to "serve" you.

[paul]

@AC HP Vista Netbook

HP2133 - Its a pity they didn't sell that well - it is in my opion the best netbook (if you take vista off and put ubuntu on it)

1280x800 screen - this is the major factor why its better than the rest. Keep your 1024x600.

9" screen not as good as 10" but oh well.

VIA Nano is quicker than Atom.

Lovely aluminum sold built case with great keyboard.

Bluetooth , wi-fi , 160G HDD (ok not as good as flash).

[Another Anonymous Coward]

Netbooks will need better screens.

.. if they want even a hope in hell of being able to play 720p content (the "not quite" HD standard that television channels, cheap TVs, and "certain websites" offer).

Currently the vista netbooks (HP 2133, Vaio P) are the only ones that cut the mustard... Microsoft is gimping the screen res on all the other ones, as it won't let XP be put on anything with an above-useless screen resolution.

And as for blu-ray.. well, that's a 1920x1080 screen needed.

That's the resolution of the 24" monitor I'm typing this comment on, so I can't see how on earth they're planning to fit it into 9" at a non-insane cost.

Then again, they'e currently making laptops with blu-ray drives and screens that aren't hi-res enough to actually display the higher quality, so who knows how silly the hardware releases will get.

Expect a throughly mediocre netbook market until MS releases windows 7 for netbooks, in 2010 or whenever the hell they feel like it.