Atomic reaction
Intel's Nick Knupffer, however, told HEXUS one shouldn't assume Pine Trail won't be able to do the things NVIDIA says it can't, like 1080p Blu-Ray for instance.
"We haven't announced what Pine Trail can and can't do yet," he told us, but added that he didn't "know if it's sensible from an OEM perspective."
"This is Atom, I dont think anyone buys it because of the performance!"
"Why would you want to use an incredibly weak processor for doing extremely high end tasks?" he asked, adding "what are you going to do with ION that can't do with Pine Trail?"
Though, as an afterthought he admitted, "I can't speak as to what ION can and can't do, because I haven't tested it myself."
So why would one choose a Pineview-based netbook over an ION if the two have the same battery life (up to five hours) and ION professes to have better performance?
"Well, because [Intel makes] it cheaper by putting graphics on the chip," said Knupffer. "The more you integrate, the less things cost," he declared.
We suppose we'll just have to wait a while longer to see whether Pine Trail really is that much cheaper than ION, and whether when NVIDIA comes out with ION 2 post CES - likely in February - it really will provide the value add netbook customers are looking for.
