Mine is the opposite, for the same reason. Something better is almost always coming out, so DON’T buy if what you have is adequate.

Save your money and wait, so when you do need a new machine for some project, you’ll get the best available at the time. (For the idea of “best” being relative to your needs and resources, not necessarily maximum performance.) Then you get to keep this “project gadget” for future projects.

The obvious exception is the unusual gadget category. If a company looks like it’s going to stop making a particular configuration of something, and you really want to have that configuration, then maybe you should buy while it’s still available. For example, Apple Newton, Sharp Zaurus, or Psion Series 5. (I can’t think of any contemporaneous example. Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard, maybe?)

Pineview is due out Q209, should have a 45nm process, integrated graphics core with memory controller and replaces FSB with DMI. The new package is expected to boost performance considerably, and with the relaxed requirements of the upcoming Windows 7, I’m anticipating notebooks coming out later in the year to be significantly better than what we have yet seen, even from CES. Expect Pineview Atom chips in both single and dual-core versions.

Medfield will be the successor to Pineview and is due out in 2010 with a 32nm process, further improving thermal efficiency and extending battery times.

I was hoping the new HP 2140 would ship with the Pineview platform, but my gut feeling says HP still has an ace up it’s sleeve. My recommendation to folks is that if you haven’t bought a netbook yet, you should hold out for a Pineview netbook with Windows 7. The difference in performance will be like night and day.

Seriously, dedicated hardware to handle multimedia is the biggest factor in pushing forward these low-power, low performance netbooks. It’s not like people need raw processing power because their statistical analysis projects are too complicated. But what they do need processing power for is encoding and decoding multimedia entertainment, editing home video, etc.

That’s what makes the Open Pandora so interesting, and netbooks so not interesting, IMO. Now, a netbook with hardware supported audio and video encoding and decoding, that would be interesting.

the FSB bump should be decent as well since most of the memory being used out there is already 667

clearly the big deal here is the new chipset, but since the current chipset already supports 2GB RAM, SATA, high resolutions, theres just not a whole lot they could realistically (in netbook necessities) add to it. my hope is that they will try & drastically reduce power consumption without cutting features (like the Silverthorne Atom does).