After months of hype, Intel formally unveiled its next generation Atom platform today.  The platform includes the single core Atom N450 and NM10 Express Chipset for netbooks, as well as the single core D410 and dual core D510 for desktops.

The N450, formerly known as the PineView, crams a CPU, GPU and memory controller on a single chip.  This means that the device will be 60% smaller and 20% more efficient than previous versions of the Atom.  However, the N450 won’t be getting any faster – its single core is still clocked at 1.66 GHz, with 512 KB of cache.

So far we are aware of 11 netbooks that will use the N450:

• Acer Aspire One 532
• ASUS Eee PC 1005PE
• Dell Mini 10
• Fujitsu MH380
• HP Mini 210
• Lenovo FL5-B3
• MSI Wind U130, U135
• Samsung N150
• Samsung NB30
• Toshiba NB300

In total, Intel claims 80 netbook design wins for the N450 from vendors such as ASUS, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Samsung and MSI.   These systems will be available starting January 4, 2010, which coincides nicely with CES.

Although the N450 is certainly a big announcement for Intel, I don’t think it is necessarily great news for the netbook market.  Over the past year, netbooks have been struggling to close the functionality gap with notebooks, while maintaining the things that we love about netbooks, namely low price, small form factor and long battery life.

The N450 is 20% more efficient than previous versions of the Atom, but it doesn’t offer much of an improvement in terms of performance.  I don’t want a netbook that will studder with VLC player and show me YouTube slideshows for 10 hours straight.  I want a netbook that will play HD video for, say, six hours, enough to get me from LAX to NY.

Sure, the N450 will be great for low-end netbooks, but is that really what consumers are clamoring for?  Is that what will drive more customers to the netbook platform?

I don’t think so.  And this leaves Intel in a rough position.  The N450 is overkill for mobile phones, but underwhelming for netbooks.  Today’s announcement really make me wonder where Intel is headed.  My hope is that the N450 continues to move downstream to the mobile phone market, while the D410 and D510 evolve to give a much needed performance bump to netbooks.

Here’s one more PineView netbook, again found on Neobits’ ecommerce site.  Known as the NB30, this device rocks an Intel Atom N450, of course, a 10.1” screen, 160 GB hard drive, 1 GB of RAM and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi.  Battery life on the NB30 is listed as 6.5 hours, according to MobileMark.

Unfortunately there are no images for the device up yet.  The stock status for the NB30 is listed as “Temporarily Sold Out,” but it’s likely to be available in the next few weeks.

Yes, yes, more PineView news.  We’re putting together a thorough summary of today’s PineView media explosion, but for now here’s a new PineView netbook from HP.

There has been a ton of rumors about the HP Mini 210 and full specs for the device were spotted today on e-tailer eCost.com’s site.  According to eCost’s product pages, the Mini 210 will sport the Intel Atom N450 PineView processor, 1 GB of RAM, 160 to 250 GB of hard drive space and 802.11 b/g/n.

The Mini 210 will be available in several colors, including Solid Black, Sonoma Red, Pacific Blue, Matte Black with Pattern, Silver with Pattern and Matte Silver with Pattern.

Pricing on eCost ranges from $321.99 to $398.99, depending on the configuration of the netbook.  All Mini 210s are listed as ‘Temporarily out of stock’ for now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if these get official within a couple of weeks.

There’s been a ton of netbook news today, and here’s a bit more.  Today, the Samsung N150 netbook popped up on the FCC.  Sadly, the only image of the N150 we have is the label pic above.  However, we do know that the N150 will sport a Gobi2000 chipset, which includes worldwide 3G data and GPS.

There’s isn’t a whole lot of information on the N150 at this point.  But we did find a product page for the N150 on Neobits with the that indicates the netbook will sport a 10.1” display, Intel Atom N450 “PineView” processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 160 GB hard drive.

Neobits lists the N150 as out of stock and seeing as Intel just announced the N450 today, I’d guess that Neobits slipped and posted these specs up a bit early.  The N150 also shows up as out of stock on other sites such as Buy.com, although Buy didn’t give up any specs.  Neither site had any pictures of the N150, unfortunately.

Last week a Lenovo netbook using Intel’s upcoming PineView processor made its way through the FCC.  Today, another netbook, this time from Fujitsu, popped up on the FCC sporting PineView goodness.

The netbook, pictured above, will be known as the Fujitsu LifeBook MH380/M380, and will be part of Fujitsu’s M Series.  The device features a 10.1” 1366×768 LCD and an Atheros 802.11 b/g/n WiFi.

FCC filings don’t reveal much more about this netbook.  And there are notes that the MH380 tested is a pre-production sample, so the specs we’re seeing today may not be finalized.

This glossy black IdeaPad netbook from Lenovo made an appearance on the FCC late Friday in a filing by Intel.  The device, which is known as the FL5-B3, features a 10.1” screen with a 1024×600 resolution, 250 GB hard drive, and 2GB of RAM.

The most interesting part of this filing, however, is the FL5-B3’s processor.  Stickers on the back of the device list the processor as a 1.66GHz PineView from Intel.  The PineView is the next generation of Intel’s Atom, and features a built in DDR2 memory controller, integrated graphics and a Broadcom video decoding processor.

The PineView is expected to be formally announced in December 2009, with a release date in January 2010.  And, as far as I can tell, the FL5-B3 is the first netbook that has been confirmed to use the PineView processor.

Notes on the back of the FL5-B3 warn that the device has not yet received regulatory approval, so the netbook is not close to being launched at this point.  Given that the PineView will be formally released in January 2010, I wouldn’t expect the FL5-B3 until Q1 2010.

One more interesting tidbit on the FL5-B3 – I don’t see any left or right mouse buttons near the device’s trackpad (close-up below).  This suggests that the trackpad may have integrated left and right buttons like a MacBook.  If implemented well, this could be a great space-saving design choice that is perfect for the netbook category.

Overall, this is definitely a welcome addition to Lenovo’s netbook lineup.  The PineView, 250 GB of storage and 2 GB of RAM are nice spec bumps.  The only qualm I have at this point is the glossy finish – if FCC filings are any indication this device is a fingerprint magnet.