Specification

Asus will be the first company to give USB 3.0 support with its P6X58 motherboard. Motherboards supporting USB 3.0 are expected to become available by the end of 2009.

The new P6X58 motherboards will use 2 USB 3.0 super speed ports. They will also offer support for Intel’s Core i7 processors, six DDR3 slots, 3 PCI ExpressCard slots, and new SATA 3.0 ports which supports 6GB/sec transfer rate. The USB 3.0 standard will offer transfer rates of up to 4.8GB/second which is accomplished through extra data lines. Currently no USB 3.0 devices are available, so this port will not be usable at the moment.

Pricing and availability
No information regarding pricing or availability has been announced as yet.

Epson plans to add another netbook to its Endeavor lineup – the Na02-mini-V. It is aimed at the Korean market.

The Na02-mini-V has a 10.1 inch display with 1024x600 native resolution. It runs on an Intel Atom N280 1.66GHz processor with Intel’s 945GSE graphics chipset. Other specifications include 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive.

There are three USB 2.0 ports, Wi-Fi, multi card reader, Ethernet and VGA ports. The netbook sports an attractive design. The 6-cell battery is expected to give up to 10 hours of uptime.

Pricing and Availability
The Na02-mini-V will be available in the Korean market from November. Prices start at ¥39,800 ($427).

Graphics card maker Nvidia will soon release a light edition of their popular Ion chipset. The new version – Ion LE - will be slightly underpowered. It will also have a lower price. While the full edition of Ion chipsets will be able to run DirectX 10, the lighter edition of Ion will support only DirectX 9. Ion LE will still be able to decode 1080p video content.

The Ion chipsets are commonly paired with netbooks using the Windows Vista operating system and the Intel Atom processor. While Ion is not the best graphics card out there, it is still a great option for most users who are not into heavy gaming. Nvidia said that Ion LE products will be compatible with the soon-to-be launched Windows 7.