Atom N450 Netbooks Will Launch Jan. 11 2010

Dec 4 2009, 10:16am CST | by Robert Evans

A date has been set! On January 11, 2010 the world of netbooks will finally move beyond the now venerable Atom N270 processor. According to Digitimes, Asustek, Acer, Lenovo, and MSI have all agreed to launch their Atom N450 lines of netbooks on the 11th of next month. The original date was set in December, but Intel asked them not to launch until after January 10th. Vendors are said to be stocking only 'conservative' numbers of the new netbooks. Earlier this year several of them were caught with too many products in inventory due to an inaccurate assumption of consumer demand. These new netbooks will launch on a variety of operating systems. Moblin, Win 7, and Win XP are named, with Win 7 starter expected to be the most popular (and most expensive) of the three. If you're planning on grabbing a netbook on the 11th, I'd recommend going with XP or Moblin. The extra cost of Windows 7 on a netbook just isn't worth it. Grab a Moblin or XP box and upgrade to Chrome OS for free when it launches later next year, possibly along with the Atom N470 in March.