Better than the EeePC
Intel is working with a range of partners to ready new
low-cost notebooks for a Q3 introduction this year, and the new
platform is known as Shelton. What we're looking at here is Intel's
upcoming Diamondville CPU, which looks like it will be clocket at
1.6GHz on a 533MHz FSB.
Add to this the Intel 945GSE chipset with integrated graphics and
support for single channel DDR2 memory and you have the basics. The
power consumption of the CPU is meant to be a mere 3.5W and the whole
platform will only draw 8W.
Although this doesn't account for additional hardware, of course, this
is just for the chipset and CPU. Other hardware that will be supported
includes an 802.11g WiFi module from Intel and the use of either a USB
or IDE SSD drive, although we'd expect these SSD drives to be similar
to those used in the EeePC, e.g., quite small in size.
Hopefully, we'll see slightly larger models than the EeePC, but as cost
is key, don't expect to see anything spectacularly different. According
to Digitimes, MSI and Gigabyte are some of the first adopters
developing products on the new platform with Dell, HP and Acer expected
to follow suit.
With an expected retail price of between US$300-$500, this could prove
to be a very interesting platform, although by now you should know how
accurate these kind of expected prices are. Let's just hope for some
slightly more usable models than the EeePC for people with "fat"
fingers .
More
here
I've a feeling that pigs might fly!