NetbookShow

Back in August we heard a rumor that the next Acer Aspire One Ferrari would be coming with AMD Fusion. We haven’t heard anything since then but that could definitely still happen. Now, we’ve got a leak of a new Acer netbook with AMD Fusion – the Acer Aspire One 522, from the person who has constantly leaked new Acer netbooks in the past, Macles.

This 10-inch Aspire One 522, follows on from the AMD Nile based 521, also 10-inch in size and carries over the same chassis but in green, and no doubt there’ll be more colors. Chassis aside, this is a new beast; It’ll have the next generation AMD Fusion platform, in particular, an AMD C-50 ‘Ontario’ APU, which is a 1GHz dual core processor, with a total TDP of 9W. For graphics, it has a Radeon 6250 chip, with DirectX 11 support with UVD3 accelerated video decoding.

That 10-inch display will have a higher resolution 1280 x 720 resolution. This isn’t the first time Acer has pumped out 10-inch netbooks with 1280 x 720 displays but it’s just that they haven’t been available in most countries. This could just as easily be released with a standard 1024 x 600 display. There’s also HDMI output to take advantage of all that media processing power.

Battery life is rated at 6 hours with a 6-cell battery, so perhaps we shouldn’t expect too much improvement in battery life over the current generation AMD Nile platform. There’s also a mono speaker instead of stereo.

ASUS have always been quiet about their 1015T series netbook with not an ounce of promotion but it’s finally here nonetheless and shipping in America.

The 1015T packs in AMD’s base level Nile platform so it’ll easily beat any single core Atom / integrated GMA graphics netbook out there, is easily capable of 1080p video playback and includes HDMI out but it’ll end up with much less battery life than any Intel counterpart – ASUS rates the battery at 6 hours, so expect about 4 at best. It has the same design as any recent Seashell netbook and that includes a matte display.

The full specs – 10.1″ 1024 x 600 display (matte), AMD Athlon II Neo V105 (1.2GHz single core) processor, ATI Radeon HD 4250 graphics, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD, b/g/n WiFi, 10/100 LAN, 0.3MP webcam, 6-cell 48Wh battery (6 hours) and Windows 7 Starter. Ports – the usual including HDMI. Weighs 2.8 lbs.

It’s priced at $350 and you can grab it in various colors.

Back at Computex several months ago we found an unexpected ASUS netbook hanging out in the corner of the ASUS booth – The Eee PC 1015T. Instead of the usual Intel Atom / ION parts the 1015T sports AMD / ATI parts – the lowest end AMD Nile – Athlon II Neo K125 processor and ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics. A combination that’s pretty rare on 10-inch netbooks as the only other netbook sporting these specs is the Acer Aspire 521. Looks are identical to the latest Eee PCs with a matte lid, palmrest with the new trackpad and with a glossy screen remaining.

The demo model was actually an early Eee PC 1015PN with an AMD Vision sticker on it to make it look like the real deal. That’s the last we heard of the netbook, until today. Netbook Italia spotted a manual up for this 1015T so it’s definitely not dead and will be coming. When? no idea on that.

Don’t forget a 12-inch version of this – the Eee PC 1215T is already up for sale in Germany priced at 445 euros.

The Acer Aspire 721 is one of the first mini-laptops from Acer (or any company for that matter) to feature a new AMD Nile processor. And the laptop is available for pre-order from Amazon for $430 plus free shipping.

The Aspire 721 packs an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel HD display and a 1.7GHz AMD Athlon II Neo K125 single core processor. it has ATI Radeon HD 4225 graphics with 384MB of dedicated video memory, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and a 6 cell, 4400mah battery.

The laptop runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and weighs about 3.1 pounds. We won’t know for a little while just how these computers stack up against machines with Intel CULV processors in terms of performance and battery life. But for $430, the Acer Aspire 721 costs just a little more than a typical netbook and offers a higher resolution display, higher performance graphics, and a version of Windows that isn’t crippled. As long as the processor is at least as fast as a typical Atom chip, this notebook seems like it could be a pretty good deal.

Last week Lenovo introduced a series of new laptops with 11 to 15 inch displays and new Intel processors. But something that I totally missed was the mention of a new Lenovo IdeaPad U165, which  will be powered by an AMD processor.

There’s not a lot of information available at the moment, so we don’t know how much the 11.6 inch Lenovo IdeaPad U160 will cost or which of AMD’s latest low power processors it will use. But Lenovo is grouping the laptop with the IdeaPad U160 on its product page, which means that the U165 and U160 will probably feature the same case design and basic features including HDMI output. The primary difference will be that the U160 will have an Intel chipset while the U165 will be AMD powered.