14 DAY TRIAL // Most of you probably know by now that most of the products now present on the netbook market are based on Intel's highly successful chip codenamed Silverthorne. As noted in several of our previous posts, while the Atom processor is at the core of almost every netbook currently available, only a small part of these products are based on chips from VIA. Come to think of it, HP is the only major manufacturer to have integrated VIA's C7-M processor into its Mini-Note PC, while competitors such as ASUS, MSI, Acer and Lenovo decided to stick with Intel's processors.
Commodore is also among these manufacturers that have chosen VIA's C7-M CPU for one of its recently showcased products, the UMMD 8010/F. The computer system, which made its debut at IFA 2008 in Berlin, has been designed to compete with all the other netbooks now available on the market, somehow despite the fact that it will not be powered by one of Intel's Atom processors.
The VIA C7-M featured on Commodore's netbook is set to run at a core speed of 1.6GHz. The netbook's specifications also include an 80GB hard drive, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. A built-in webcamera is placed on top of the netbook's 10-inch display, which is a feature that such a device is unlikely to lack.
There are not that many details available on the new netbook computer system, other than the ones already mentioned above, but we can tell you that its price will start somewhere around $610. This makes the upcoming product somewhat expensive, especially if you consider the pricing of all its other competitors, which also have the advantage of being better established on the market.
With all that, Commodore's decision to enter the netbook market goes to demonstrate how successful and popular these devices have become, especially since we’re dealing here with a company that specializes in creating high-performance custom gaming PCs. We could safely conclude that this Via C7-M powered netbook is, in terms of performance, miles away from any other of its products.