Acer, Nvidia Planning Partnership?

The question and answer session took place at Laptop magazine and Agnihotry was asked specifically about Intel competitors all clamoring for a piece of the netbook pie.

Agnihotry told Laptop, "On the Nvidia solution, the benefits are great, including the ability to play back high-def content. You will see us looking at this technology much closer in our second-half products."

It's unclear whether or not Agnihotry meant that PC manufacturer Acer was lining up a partnership with Nvidia for future netbook products. But that statement could indicate that Acer is watching Intel's competition and may be considering moving away from the Intel Atom, which has become something of a standard processor for netbooks across the board.

To add a little fuel to the fire, the Nvidia ION on Wednesday was certified by Microsoft to run Windows Vista, according to a statement by the chip manufacturer.

Last week Acer brought its 10.1-inch Aspire One netbook to the United States. In the previous iteration of the Aspire One, the 8.9-inch netbook, customers were given the option of having Linpus Linux Lite preloaded on the Acer machine.

Operating system options for the 10.1-inch Aspire One? Only Windows XP Home will be preloaded by the vendor.

So what does Agnihotry's statement, Nvidia ION's certification to run Windows and Acer's move to ditch Linux in favor of Windows all mean? Right now it's nothing but speculation. Repeated attempts to get in touch with both Acer and Nvidia were unsuccessful at press time.

The tea leaves aren't clear but these developments could indicate that things are lining up for Acer and Nvidia to begin working together closely. After all, netbooks are inexpensive portable computing devices where customers are fixating almost as much on price as on functionality.

The Nvidia ION-based products will be able to drop the price of a computer to $299, according to Nvidia -- well within the netbook range.

As for functionality, Mike Ybarra, general manager for the Windows division at Microsoft, said customers are expecting a full-featured experience from netbooks, even though they aren't fully fledged notebooks.

"Customers have told us they expect a full Windows experience across a variety of PC designs. What many people call a 'netbook' today is really a small notebook, and users expect it to perform like one. With Nvidia's ION platform combined with Windows Vista Home Premium, consumers can get an affordable, premium Windows experience in a small notebook or desktop form factor," Ybarra said in a statement.

The Nvidia ION platform will be available in the summer of 2009. While summer is a pretty broad time frame for a product release, it would fall in the second half of 2009, which, incidentally, coincides with the time frame Sumit Agnihotry of Acer mentioned that his company would be looking into Nvidia for its netbooks.