Coming Soon: Lightweight Laptops That Pack More of a Punch

How much full-blown laptop power can be packed into a small, lightweight chassis--and at a budget-minded cost, no less?

This week Intel announced its second-generation Atom processor; Acer unveiled a slew of new netbooks and a small desktop PC dubbed a "nettop" based on Nvidia's Ion platform; and Hewlett-Packard began shipping its Pavilion dv2--the first laptop to use AMD's Neo chipset. Clearly there's mounting competition in the growing netbook/mini-notebook category that Intel's Atom CPU currently has a near-stranglehold on.

Though some netbooks are similar in size and weight to traditional ultraportable laptops, they deliver mobile computing at a fraction of the price to an increasingly mobile and always-connected audience. Research firm Gartner expects 21 million netbooks will ship this year, nearly double last year's total.

But netbooks are already growing up, as manufacturers add features and increase screen sizes (likely necessities as some users tire of cramped designs common amongst early models ). As vendors introduce 'tweener laptops with specs that straddle the line between "netbook" and "ultraportable," competition will only heat up. Here's what's in the pipeline.

Intel 2-GHz Atom: Windows 7-Ready

The new Intel Atom Z550--one of two new Atom CPUs launched a year after the first-gen Atom hit--is a 2GHz CPU that incorporates Intel's Hyperthreading technology for improved multitasking and graphics performance. Although no new products were announced, the new chips are already available to manufacturers; and we expect to see products later this year.

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