ASUS also demonstrated a prototype notebook with a 4.7" LCD touchpad running off a separate system-on-a-chip, more specifically, NVIDIA's Tegra APX. The Tegra APX is a combination of an ARM11 core with additional support for high definition video decode, a 3D accelerator core, image processor for webcams and a display output.

The main display could run either a regular OS off a separate Intel Atom processor, or you could skip that and use the system-on-a-chip with its embedded OS.  The benefit for the latter is that battery life should be exceptional; ASUS claimed up to 12 hours of battery life while viewing videos, so you could use the touchpad to browse through your video library and then queue up several videos to watch on the main display, all without ever powering up the Intel Atom with its accompanying motherboard, memory, etc. The Tegra SOC uses the notebook's main battery, thus it benefits from very long battery life. Most ARM11 based devices have much smaller batteries since they have to be in far more portable enclosures.

Microsoft Demos Windows 7 on an Eee PC, it works ASUS' Atom Based Thin-and-Light with 512GB SSD
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  • yyrkoon - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link

    Heya Jarred,

    Their forum pages still load atrociously slow. They're also very unorganized, meaning instead of having several categories under motherboards such as how ABIT's site used to be laid out, you have to wade through tons of garbage to find what you're looking for. Yes, we all know of the search function (at least it should have one ), but sometimes people like to read about varying products so they know what to expect.

    You're not Asus, I understand that, but maybe you could mention it to someone who could remedy that. I am personally not very big on Asus products, but fixing this one issue for me could change my mind a good deal since I am a small business systems integrator who likes to keep on top of known issues.
  • KeypoX - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link

    And more importantly Andriod!!! I hope it can do some damage, because win 7 is not that great... not much of a upgrade to vista.

    Netbooks are looking more and more attractive.
  • KeypoX - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link

    http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=13867">http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=13867
  • 7Enigma - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link

    Love the new products, but I'm worried the article for builder's is going to get pushed because of CES.

    Mr. Fink, you're not at CES are you? :)
  • Icewind31 - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link

    however I'm sorta still hyped up about that EEE Box w/ the HD3400 graphics... they made the announcement.. but since then... no release date or anything! Have definitely been waiting for them to release it.
  • Spivonious - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link

    It reminds me of the old Apple IIC; just connect a display and you're good to go.

    I'm curious how much the wireless HDMI recievers cost. It would be neat if they were built into TVs, so I could just pull the keyboard out from under the coffee table and start using the computer.
  • acejj26 - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link

    The saying goes, "You innovate your way out of a recession," and this is exactly what Asus is doing. The new products look amazing.
  • R3MF - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link

    that is what i want to see.
  • Roland00 - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link

    You are going to have to wait, for several reasons

    1) Ion was just announced a few weeks ago and is still in the prototype stage, thus any possible laptop would still be in the idea stage and unless Asus or similar brands were working extremely closely with nvidia they probably don't even have the blueprints for the motherboards.
    2) The dual core atoms have double to triple (depending on which atotm to atom you are comparing it to) the watts required to run the laptop thus draining battery faster. Thus you may have to wait for the new 32nm atoms.
    3) Finally it is in the netbook companies best interest to release a netbook with a windows os (due to more marketshare, for better or worse people are less likely to buy a netbook with a non windows os). Microsoft in its rules for XP on netbooks says no dualcore atoms or more ram than 1 gig. Thus unless a company puts windows vista basic on the nettop you are probably waiting for windows 7.

    Thus we probably won't see atom/ion notebooks until at least q3 09 and maybe not until q4 09/q1 10

    here are microsoft's rules in short on what a netbook has to have to have xp home on it.
    http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_conte...">http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio...p;task=v...

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