Flash 10 / 10.1 Comparison with Nvidia ION
December 15, 2009
Lenovo adds VIA Nano powered IdeaPad S12
June 27, 2009
There has been a little bit of confusion about the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 with regards to what’s going on and it turns out the company is planning multiple SKU’s, something we’d overseen. So the delay (we’ve updated the earlier post) is only for the model with the Nvidia ION chipset.
To our surprise, the pre-order page has been updated and now feature a VIA Nano powered version of the IdeaPad S12 and in a way, this might be the most interesting model, of the three. Lenovo has gone for the Nano ULV 2250 which has 1MB of cache (that’s twice of the Atom) and the CPU is clocked at 1,3GHz on an 800MHz bus. Even though the CPU clock is slower, we’d expect this processor to perform better than the Atom N270.
Lenovo hasn’t listed what chipset it will pair up the Nano CPU with, but it will have Chrome9 HC3 graphics. However, as this graphics solution is used by all Nano compatible chipsets from VIA, we can’t even make an educated guess as ato which chipset will be used.
The remaining features seems to be the same as of the Atom models, with 1GB of memory (oddly listed at 667MHz when 800MHz memory would be the right choice for this platform), the same 12.1-inch 1,280×800 display, a 160GB 2.5-inch hard drive, 802.11b/g WiFi and a 6-cell battery.
Hopefully more details will be out soon, but at $449 the VIA Nano SKU is $50 cheaper than the Atom N270 models with the Intel 945GSE chipset. You can find the product pre-order page here
Lenovo IdeaPad S12 with ION delayed until October
June 25, 2009
Despite the pre-order page just having gone live earlier today, we’ve just been informed that the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 with the Nvidia ION chipset has been delayed and it’s not by a few weeks, but rather by a few months, as it’s not expected to hit retail until October now.
From what we’ve been told this is a strategic business decision, whatever that means. There might even be some hardware changes to the IdeaPads S12 before it hits retail, or at least that’s our understanding from what we were told.
Another reason could be because Lenovo has decided to sit back and wait for Windows 7 to arrive, as this would make for an overall much more interesting system with better performance, at least compared to putting Windows Vista on it. Windows XP doesn’t really take advantage of Nvidia’s ION chipset and much of the enhanced functionality would be wasted.
This means that all of you that were eagerly waiting to get your hands on one, now have to wait even longer. It does sort of make sense to launch ahead of the Christmas holiday season, but right now it seems an awfully long way away. Lenovo might also miss out sales, with potential customers getting a different system instead.
We’ll keep you up to date if anything changes with regards to the availability.
Lenovo IdeaPad S12 up for pre-order in the US
June 25, 2009
Lenovo has put up the order page for the IdeaPad S12, although at the moment it doesn’t seem to work that well, as pressing the customize and buy button takes you to a page that tells you that the page you were looking for isn’t there.
The IdeaPad S12 will start at $499 which is quite pricey for a netbook, but it’s worth remembering that this isn’t your average netbook, if it can be considered a netbook at all taking its size into account.
For the money you get an Atom N270 processor, the Nvidia ION chipset, 1GB of 667MHz DDR2 memory, a 12.1-inch display with 1,280×800 resolution, a 5,400 rpm 160GB hard drive, 802.11b/g WiFi (why is it missing draft-N?) and a 6-cell battery.
The order page is as we mentioned not finished as yet and hopefully some of the specs will improve. There are also some mistakes on the page, like the fact that the graphics is listed as Intel GMA 950.
The availability date is set to more than four weeks, which means that the IdeaPad S12 isn’t going to be shipping any time soon. You can find the pre-order page here
