Solved! Should I wait for Nvidia Ion Netbooks?

[avinash4]

Hey everyone, I'm currently on the market for a netbook because battery life is very important for me. The school I will be attending doesn't have many power outlets and I'm frequently stuck without a powered laptop in lecture. Last year I purchased a q6600 desktop for my primary use, so the netbook will be for in-lecture use mainly.

I'm interested in the Asus Eee PC 1005HA Premium, featuring:
(1005HA-PU1X-BK) 10.1" Color Shine LCD Display, Intel Atom N280 1.6Ghz 667Mhz FSB, 160GB HDD , 1024MB of DDR2 RAM, 1.27Kg, Bluetooth, Wireless 802.11b/g/n, HD Audio, 1.3MP Camera, Windows XP, 6-Cell 63Wh Li-ion Battery. The advertised battery life is 10.5hr, which seems excellent.

However, I'm also contemplating waiting for the Nvidia Ion based netbooks such as the Lenovo S12 (Ion) or Samsung N510. They have identical specs to the 1005HA except for having the Ion chipset.

I was wondering if Ion provides any added speed to the netbook, other than it's ability to handle video better? Will there be less lag in programs, or are the benefits solely for multimedia? Also chances are, with the 12inch screens in the Ion netbooks and graphics chipset, battery life will be reduced, is this true?

What do you guys suggest? Will I regret having a 1005HA once the Ions hit the market?

 

[mrobi322]

That's difficult to say because few people have had the chance to evaluate the Ion platform. If you're using the laptop primarily for lecture, I'd expect that you're not going to be watching much video or using a whole lot of graphics - just taking notes. I wouldn't be suprised if the Ion chipset ended up using more power than the current graphics chipset, so your battery life could be somewhat worse with the Ion. However, I think I read that Ion does make two of the intel chips unnecessary (northbridge and southbridge), so there might be some power savings there.

In short, you'll just have to wait and see.