The end of 2009 is less than a two weeks away, and it’s only been a few short months since mobile computing enthusiasts were treated to the first netbooks making their way to retail shelves, with the likes of the early Asus Eee PCs and HP’s short-lived but strangely popular Mini-Note 2133 powered by Intel Celeron and VIA C7-series processors. Today, we’re already seeing a throng of netbooks in various shapes, sizes and colors available to buy, such as the Lenovo IdeaPad S10.

Lenovo may be a little later to market than most of the other laptop makers also keen to grab a slice of the netbook pie, but at the very least they’ve managed to produce a respectable product that also happens to be one of the better netbooks we’ve had the chance to play with so far.

Full write-up and oodles of pictures, all after the break.

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So it seems that AMD does want a chunk of the Netbook pie after all, announcing a pair of ultraportable platforms, dubbed ‘Congo’ and ‘Yukon’ respectively. Some tidbits taken from their recent Financial Analyst Day summary release:

• “Congo” is based upon the dual-core “Conesus” CPU with the RS780M and SB710 chipset.  “Yukon” is based upon a single-core CPU with the RS690E and SB600 chipset. While targeted at the ultra-portable market, these platforms have been designed to address a portion of the mini-notebook market, specifically those people who are dissatisfied with the limited experience offered by mini-notebooks.  “Yukon” is planned to be available in 1H09 followed by “Congo” in 2H09.
• AMD also announced the 2010 ultraportable notebook platform code named “Nile”.  “Nile” will feature the dual-core “Geneva” CPU utilizing DDR3 memory technology.
• In 2011, AMD plans to introduce the dual-core “Ontario” APU for ultraportable and mini-notebook platforms.

My take on this particular bit of info? While this is all very nice and forward looking, AMD’s basically saying that they’re only planning to make things available somewhere in late 2009; that’s almost a year away. Even if you take away the fact that the economy’s in the toilet, we’d still be betting that AMD’ll eventually announce some more delays here and there, given their recent track record of much chest-pounding but not delivering. Also, this just gives Intel a nice bit of time to further stake their claim on the netbook market with their Atom lineup.

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