14 DAY TRIAL // Though it does add a small financial drawback to all personal computers it is installed on, the fact remains that NVIDIA's latest mobile graphics processor, known as the next-generation ION, does deliver on its promise of enabling advanced multimedia capabilities and graphics support to a class of entry-level systems that would otherwise be restricted to basic web browsing and document viewing. As such, it wasn't that big of a surprise to see ION-based nebtooks on display at this year's CeBIT expo in Hanover, Germany. Those models’ availability, however, was not specifically pointed out, but it looks as though consumers may not have to wait much longer.
Though a more recent official update or announcement has yet to be given, it seems that a certain part of Europe is already preparing to, or has already greeted the ION. Specifically, Acer's Aspire One 532G has been put up for pre-order on a French online store.
For the amount of 369 Euro, consumers will get a system based, predictably, on the Intel Atom N450 CPU, which has a clock speed of 1.66GHz. This chip is backed up by 1GB of RAM, the graphics media accelerator (GMA) 3150 integrated graphics, a hard disk drive with a storage capacity of 160GB and, of course, an NVIDIA ION GPU (GT218), with eight processing cores of its own.
In this setup, the video power of NVIDIA's solution will enable the 10.1-inch screen to display multimedia with no problems, play certain games and stream online videos. Of course, the last two would not be possible without the necessary connectivity. As such, the Aspire One 532G comes with both 10/100 Ethernet as well as WiFi. Finally, the entire configuration operates on electricity provided by a six-cell battery, which can last for up to eight hours on a single charge.
Currently, the netbook is expected to start shipping on May 14 and will come pre-loaded with the Microsoft Windows 7 Starter operating system.