Ion to supercharge Lenovo's S12 netbook

 

Gallery

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 26 May 2009 at 10:21

Lenovo has unveiled the IdeaPad S12, which will become the first netbook to sport Nvidia's Ion graphics platform.

The current combination of an Atom processor and underpowered Intel graphics chipset has limited netbooks to basic activities such as web surfing and email. However, Nvidia hopes its Ion platform - a charged Atom, for those who missed the pun - will change all that.

The IdeaPad S12 will be the first netbook to feature the discrete Ion graphics platform, which has impressed in early demonstrations by running games such as Call of Duty 4 at near 30fps. Nvidia's also claiming that it will handle high-definition video without stuttering.

Ion will be backed by a 12in, 1,280 x 800 screen, an Atom N270 processor, up to 160GB of storage and 1GB of RAM. There's a full size keyboard, removing another of the netbook's major bugbears, as well as 3G and Wi-Fi.

Look for it in June with a price tag of $499 in the US. UK pricing, as always, to follow.