Don’t expect an amazing desktop environment yet though, as the alpha release utilizes the basic Xfce desktop. A much slicker and overall cooler user interface built with OpenedHand’s Clutter framework will be introduced later in development.

Final release is some time off but if you’re interested in trying Moblin out earlier, head on over and grab it.

Source: Ars Technica

The processor won’t offer any massive upgrades on its predecessor, the N270, but will give machines a slight performance boost. The chip will run at a 1.66GHz speed in comparison to the N270’s 1.6GHz, as well as a 667MHz bus compared to the N270’s 533MHz. The unit price will be a little higher than the original, an estimated $60-65 compared to $46.

The chip is already in Asus’ plans and will be packed into upcoming netbooks, and according to a DigiTimes article published today, N280 netbooks will hit the market between Q2 and Q3 ‘09.

Along with a new touchscreen, the 8.9-inch netbook for students has a 180-degree swivel design and rotational camera. This funky little netbook, which will be sold alongside the existing Classmate PC, can fold up and is light enough for kids to carry around.

It is powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 with 512MB of RAM and a 60GB hard drive. The OS of choice is Windows XP and the 4-cell battery can keep it running for four hours.

The Classmate PC will be sold on contracts to manufacturers across the world and Intel believes it can help increase the amount of students who have access to a PC or internet (just 5% out of 1.3 billion school-age children currently do).

Current Atom platform restrictions limit netbook panel size to 10.2-inches, so HP’s plea to Intel, whose Atom processor remains dominant (for now), could again push forward the trend of netbooks getting bigger and bigger.

Given HP’s brand image and high volumes, sources believe there is a very good chance they will be able to get the restrictions uplifted.

NVIDIA’s MCP79 chipset will be the first to support Atom CPUs, but initially will only apply to nettops. After that, though, we should start seeing netbooks benefit from this venture. ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI have already given their blessings to the partnership, believing it will give them more pricing flexibility.

The “Medfield” chips, which are slated for release in 2010 and will follow up on next year’s “Pinefield” chips that were previously announced, will offer dual-core designs like the current Intel Atom lineup.

Pann’s most revealing and blunt comment was this: “If you’ve ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size–it’s fine for an hour. It’s not something you’re going to use day in and day out.” Well, he is talking for a lot of people there, but it just further casts doubts on Intel’s belief in the netbook genre. In short, Intel don’t buy into the concensus among many that netbooks could replace laptops and went out of their way to shoot it down. This comes after AMD chief Dirk Meyer said earlier this month that AMD is “ignoring the Netbook phenomenon” and marketing director Bahr Mahoney added, “There are a fair number of people that are not satisfied with the experience they’re getting on these mininotebook platforms.”

For netbook fans, the lack of faith by both Intel and AMD is a little disspiritng and casts doubt on whether this genre does in fact have a future, especially with many newer models becoming bigger — closer to traditional notebook size — such as the upcoming Acer Aspire One model that will be fairly bigger than its predecessor.

ARM is teaming up with Canonical to optimize the Ubuntu Desktop OS for its ARMv7 architecture, including ARM Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 processor-based systems. ARM considers this move “natural evolution” given its position in the mobile device market, and considering how effective its work has been, and soon netbook users are going to benefit from their manufacturing expertise it looks like.

Director of strategic software alliances for ARM, Kerry McGuire, told the magazine that, “Our platform can provide not only high performance but all-day battery life and advanced video functionality” and boasted that ARM can provide maximum power saving. If this isn’t all hype and AMD can match or outdo Intel, we could be looking at some intense competition among netbook processor developers, which could surely only be a good thing for the growing market.

The Bobcat is speculated to feature 64-bit 1GHz core and consume eight watts of power. This would actually be more than Atom’s usage, but the Bobcat is expected to also have an on-chip memory controller that would reduce power consumption elsewhere in the machine.

Another rumour is that AMD could also announce plans for its UVC (Ultra-Value Client), a series of dual-core chips that run around 1.6GHz, although the higher power requirements could mean they run on nettops and not portable devices.

Tomorrow is the day when we’ll know for sure what AMD has up its sleeve, and we’ll have an update here as soon as concrete information is available.

Battery life, ever an important feature among netbook users, is one of the main things that AMD plan to address, along with video performance. AMD’s Vice-President of Advanced Marketing, Pat Moorehead, is telling us to expect an impressive 8-9 hours in battery life on a netbook.

As for video performance, AMD is expected to use its ownership of ATI to full effect and “will likely seek to have the chip included in its transition from the current 65nm production process to the smaller and more power-efficient 45nm stage”, according to the APC story.

Moorehead was also critical of the gradual price increases in the netbook market, which now sees some of the larger models surpassing $1000 in price. AMD president and CEO, Dick Meyer, said on this, “We do have strategies together with our OEMs for pushing our solutions both down into smaller form factors and lower notebook price points.”