Need a simple and cheap laptop to browse the web and check email? Consider the new class of small computers called Netbooks. They are in the $200 price range and most run on Linux, although some have Windows XP. Don’t be scared of Linux, it is very stable and arguably more secure because it is not prone to contracting Windows based viruses. Email and web browsing works exactly the same way as on any Windows or Apple PC you have ever used.
It looks like chip-maker INTEL, who’s chips make almost all computers run, has entered the operating system market. They are providing a customized version of Linux, an open source operating system, to run on this new computing platform. This version is optimized to run efficiently with new class of Netbook microprocessor chips supplied by Intel, according to the article.
Intel hasn’t hasn’t really taken a shine to the idea of netbooks, since the low price point of the Atom processor they use doesn’t allow for very high profit margins. Well, it looks like Intel has realized that netbooks are here to stay because they’ve just taken the wraps off their own flavor of Linux optimized for the Atom processor: Moblin. Currently available as an alpha release, Moblin is built off of the GNOME Mobile platform and will utilize Intel’s own Clutter and GUPnP open source technologies. This is pretty exciting news since we just found out about another netbook-specific operating system: Jolicloud. At the very least, you probably won’t be seeing a lot of XP around soon.
link: Intel’s new OS for netbooks