In Our Humble Opinion

There is no doubt that the Next-Generation NVIDIA ION offers better graphics and video playback performance for netbooks. As this NVIDIA slide "discretely" puts it, there is nothing the new Intel Pine Trail platform can do that the Next-Generation NVIDIA ION cannot do better.

With that said, what's good for a notebook may not necessarily be desirable in a netbook. Although the distinction between netbooks and full notebooks have blurred significantly (despite Microsoft's meddling), netbooks are still defined by their small screens, small keyboards and relatively slow processors. These limitations make the netbook a rather poor mobile gaming system, even with the Next-Generation NVIDIA ION driving it.

Even the NVIDIA ION's high-definition video capability is hampered by the netbook's inherent simplicity - all netbooks lack DVD drives, and have hard disk drives or in some cases, solid state drives with limited capacity. In other words, the ION netbook may be capable of delivering high-definition video output but its lack of storage prevents it from becoming a practical home theatre PC.

Most importantly though, users expect netbooks to be much cheaper than regular notebooks. If a netbook costs as much as a notebook, then it loses much of its appeal as the notebook will always offer much better performance with fewer limitations. As such, NVIDIA's biggest challenge lies not in convincing the consumer that the ION is much faster than Intel's integrated graphics, but in making sure ION netbooks are able to offer that performance with the lowest possible price premium.

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