5 AMD Fusion-Powered Ultraportables, Previewed.

One of the big announcements at CES was AMD's launch of the Fusion series of chips, which delivers the performance of an ultraportable at the price of a netbook. Fusion APU's integrate a dual-core CPU, DX11 graphics, full HD video playback, and are being fitted in 11.6-inch form-factors,  (the new Macbook Air standard), and are able to deliver up to  10 hours of battery life. 
Netbooks based on last year's AMD Nile line-up were anemic both in terms of performance and battery life, and it is only recently that Intel went dual core on their netbooks. Netbooks with a discrete graphics chipset (nVidia Ion) were pricey, and hard to find in India. All that's about to change once we start seeing these ultraportables hit Indian shores. To give you an idea of why we're so excited about Fusion-based netbooks/ laptops/ultraportables, here's an excerpt from Liliputing, who've scored a hands-on of the Asus Eee PC 1215B at CES.

"The Zacate scored almost twice as high as an Atom N550 dual core chip in PCMark05 and wiped the floor in the 3DMark06 test with a score of over 2300, compared with 154 for the N550."

Engadget's review of the HP dm1z has has a bunch of results that show performance comparable to last year's Alienware M11x, which runs an the Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU. Battery life is quoted at around a more realistic 5 to six hours.

Low Power APUs	Model	TDP	Core Count	Frequency
E-Series (former codename: “Zacate”) Designed for mainstream notebooks, All-in-Ones, and small form factor desktops	E-350	18 W	2	1.6 GHz
	E-240	18 W	1	1.5 GHz
C-Series (former codename: “Ontario”) Designed for HD netbooks and other emerging form factors	C-50	9 W	2	1.0 GHz
	C-30	9 W	1	1.2 GHz

We're most interested in AMD's E-350 series APU, which was shown in laptops ranging from 11.6-inch to 15-inch sizes. IMHO, the 11.6-inch form factor is the perfect size for writers. 

Lenovo ThinkPad X120e
Starting at $400 in the US, this one's shaping up to be an affordable 11.6-inch business ultraportable.  Powered by the AMD E-350 APU, it weighs 1.4kg with a 6-cell battery that promises over 6 hours of battery life. Connectivity options include 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G, 2xUSB 2.0 ports, HDMI, D-sub, an Ethernet port, memory card reader and a built in webcam.

HP Pavilion dm1
With a starting at $450 and upwards, the Pavilion dm1 has a 11.6-inch 1366 x 768 display, 3 GB of RAM, 320GB hard-drive, HDMI out and can play Full HD video. The dm1 weighs 1.6 kgs with the 6-cell battery, which can deliver upto 9-10 hours of battery life.

IdeaPad S205
This 11.6-inch laptop has pretty much the same specs as the Thinkpad X120e, but can be beefed up optionally with a 750GB hard drive and 8GB of DDR3 RAM and 3G.

Sony Vaio Y Series
Yet another 11.6-inch ultraportable, the Vaio Y series is available in your choice of Intel Core i3 and AMD processors. The VPCYB1S1E/S, features AMD's E-350 processor, and features a 11.6-inch screen, 320 GB HDD, Windows 7 Home premium, and 2GB of DDR3 RAM. Weighing around 1.5kg, the unit can be loaded with upto 500GB HDD storage and up to 8GB RAM.

Acer Aspire 4253
Acer announced three laptops at CES in the Aspire range with Fusion chips - starting with the the 10.1-inch Aspire One 522, the 14-inch 4253, and the 15.6-inch Aspire 5253.  We like the 14-inch version the most, which is  paired with Radeon HD 6470 512MB graphics. The larger form factor also means that you get a DVD writer and a multi-touch trackpad. No word on price yet, according to reports the Aspire 4253 provides around three hours of battery life on a 4400 mAh 6-cell battery.