Asus has pulled some noteworthy tricks in the interest of pushing out netbooks that pack a little more power than competing machines—namely, stuffing desktop-specific Atom CPUs into netbook form factors. It did so with the 1201N, which used a dual-core Atom 330 CPU and is poised to do it again with the 1215N, which will feature a dual-core Atom D525 processor clocked at 1.8GHz.
Engadget is reporting that the 12-inch Eee PC 1215N will hit the market near the end of August and will feature “NVIDIA’s Optimus to intelligently switch between discrete and integrated graphics.” So the machine will use the standard Intel graphics chipset for basic computing tasks, which ought to conserve battery life, and then kick over to the NVIDIA graphics chip for more intensive tasks like gaming and watching videos.
The 1215N will apparently be available around August 23rd with a starting price below $500, although nothing’s been officially announced by Asus yet.
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