It's what's on the outside that counts
"We don't want to be known as the bad experience company," said Joe Macri when discussing AMD's future options in the thin-and-light space. There is already speculation that AMD's upcoming Ontario platform could slot nicely into the ever-blurring netbook category, possibly giving NVIDIA's ION platform a run for its money.AMD is even experimenting by offering punters an external graphics option, like the ATI XGP, available with the Acer Ferrari one amongst other offerings. AMD affectionately refers to its external graphics engine as "Plug ‘n' Pulverize graphics performance," proclaiming it can truly transform thin-and light laptops into a pretty decent gaming machine with improved battery life.
But AMD says the technology, which is PCIe 2.0-compatible, has been a bit of a hard sell as OEMs typically prefer to get punters to lay out for better notebooks rather than giving them the option for buying an add-on device.
Sobon, however, is optimistic that ATI XGP will start to take off. "If Acer can be really successful with it, then the others will," she said.
Ultimately, what AMD wants potential buyers to realise is that they shouldn't opt for a cheap and cheerful netbook when they can, in Shutter's words, "have what you want, where you want and how you want it using a platform like this."
We reckon that AMD is rubbishing the basic (Intel-powered) netbook for the simple reason that it does not have the current technology to power such a device. If the upcoming Bobcat platform had been available right now, cheap netbooks would be viewed rather more favourably by the company.
