Netbooks have always been a bit gimmicky. The small form factor and the ability to go anywhere are nice, but netbooks have serious problems. Cramped keyboards, awkward screen sizes, and a general lack of power have been holding netbooks from truly becoming mainstream. The Lenovo Ideapad S12 has most of the good netbooks offer and it has fixed most of the problems that hold them back. The Ideapad S12 is a 12 inch netbook with the NVIDIA Ion chipset that can play full 1080p video, and play games like Call of Duty 4. The S12 proves that netbooks have come into their own.

In addition to the NVIDIA Ion GPU, the S12 also has the Intel Atom N270 processor. The two together can work together by sharing processing tasks between the CPU and GPU - essentially the S12 is going to be able to fake dual cores. Because of the beefy graphics processor, 1080p video via HDMI is a reality. You also will get a 160GB SATA drive, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and a 3 cell battery (upgradable to 6). With the battery, the whole computer will only weigh a tad over three pounds (1.4kg). WiFi, Bluetooth and wired LAN are standard for connectivity as is an express card port if you want to go 3G. The Ideapad S12 will come standard with Windows XP, but imagine these specs with Windows 7 running on it.

The best part is that the NVIDIA Ion model will only cost $499. This is a great price for the post powerful netbook currently available. Lenovo has certainly made an impression with the S12.

Via Ubergizmo.