12.1” ION ASUS Eee PC 1201N - Memorial Day Sale $464 + Free Shipping
$464
$749
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Update: Some more info came in. NVidia says “next generation ION” will have 5+ hours battery life and 5-10x faster than Pinetrail Atom graphics (with W7 and HD Flash support - but that’s a given)
Some more info regarding NVidia ION 2. That’s what we all call it, but NVidia officially confirmed it’s existence today, and calls it “next generation ION” which they told Fudzilla yesterday during a conference call.
Initial plans were to launch ION 2 at the end of this year but it has been delayed at the request of manufacturers who are currently enjoying good sales with the current ION chipset. Previously it was mentioned that ION 2 would launch at CES 2010 next year but that has been delayed to a Q1 2010 release. We will still see ION 2 products showcased at the event however.
Nothing is known technically about the ION 2 except, as confirmed recently, that it will be compatible with the upcoming Pinetrail platform for netbooks and nettops. The current ION platform is currently incompatible with Pinetrail. Guess Intel is not too happy about that! We consumers are though. ION is awesome.
Peter, Adobe has released the fixed Flash Player 10.1 beta 2 release. Looking at the release notes for beta 2, still quite buggy.
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
Thanks for the hot tip about the new version.
This is only my first attempt (just installed Beta 2), but I don’t appear to be getting any video acceleration under Beta 2 using my netbook with GMA 500 graphics. Beta 1 provided hardware acceleration, albeit with a few quirks (required older driver, only worked up to 720p). This is a major step back so far. Tried it in Chrome and Internet Explorer.
It also seems more crash prone (as it crashing constantly, versus only once in a while in the last release). Of course, they are not optimizing for the GMA 500. Hopefully the final release will expand support.