Ion2
First wave of Ion 2 ASUS Eee PC 1201PNs lack NVIDIA Optimus
Well, this is sad. While we told you earlier this week that the Ion 2-powered ASUS Eee PC 1201PN wouldn’t be arriving until late May , a number of European sites have gotten early review samples of the 12-inch “netbook” — if you choose to call it that — and have discovered that it doesn’t use NVIDIA’s Optimus automatic graphics switching technology. That’s right, instead we’re told by NVIDIA that the discrete GeForce 201M GPU runs continuously and Intel’s integrated chip is never used — a configuration which sounds like it’ll absolutely kill the battery life on this machine.
IE9 demoed on Ion-based Eee PC with full GPU acceleration
Although we were a little more focused on Windows Phone 7 Series when we went to MIX 10, Microsoft’s other big announcement at the conference was Internet Explorer 9 , which offers HTML5 support and support for GPU acceleration throughout the browsing experience. We saw a few demos of the system in action at MIX, but this video from NVIDIA does a little better job showing how helpful that extra GPU boost can be — IE9 running on the Ion 2-based Eee PC 1201PN smokes a regular Atom-based netbook across a suite of tests
ASUS’s 20-inch ET2010 EeeTop models with Ion power detailed
We’ve been hearing about the ET2010 model since CES , then got another glimpse at CeBIT a few weeks ago, and now the all-in-one machine is making its international debut — and ASUS has more than one to share with us. The five models range from the ET2010AG, with an AMD Athlon II processor, up to the ET2010PNT, with an Atom D510
Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger phone for France is hardly Pink
Microsoft’s a pretty big company, and while we’ve been focused on its Windows Phone 7 Series and Pink mobile projects over here in the Land of the Free, its Live Messenger arm has apparently teamed up with French mobile carrier SFR for a branded phone.
Disgruntled auto salesman bricks cars with remote kill-switch
Over the years, a number of optional technologies have allowed new auto buyers to remotely disable and / or recover their vehicles after purchase, but these devices aren’t always optional, and it might not even be the buyer who activates them.
AMD to finally take on netbook space with new Fusion chip… next year
We’ve always said AMD should go after the gaping hole between netbooks and thin-and-lights by releasing a low-power platform with solid graphics abilities, and it looks like the company’s finally coming around — AMD’s John Taylor just told us that the chipmaker will be releasing a netbook-class Fusion CPU / GPU hybrid codenamed “Ontario” with integrated DX11 graphics sometime next year. If Ontario sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it leaked in the past — it’s a part of the “Brazos” platform built around the low-power Bobcat core
