Ben reported on the new MSI netbooks recently [Not your standard cookie-cutter specs] and highlighted that MSI will use the Z530 and Poulsbo chipset, the Menlow platform, originally designed for MIDs, and not the existing netbook platform. They aren’t the first netbook devices we’ve heard about that will use this platform as the Dell Mini 12 is already out there using it but it could be that we see a lot more of these as it offers an interesting marketing possibility at a time when netbook manufacturers are trying to make their products stand out from the crowd.

LaptopMag recently interviewed MSI and asked about their decision to use the Menlow platform. The answer gives us some clues.

Why would MSI use Menlow? Part of the answer comes from MSI in the LaptopMag interview:

“Now we are going to come out with the U110 and the U115. These are similar to the past systems in size and will look like the original Wind but they utilize the Intel Atom “Menlow” processor – the Atom Z530.

The U110 and the U115 will be out in late January.  The biggest difference between these two models is their battery life. With the U110, we will deliver 8 hours of computing time; and 10 hours with the U115. Both will use a 6-cell battery.”

So it looks like the 1.6Ghz Menlow platform is attractive because of battery life. Not surprising as it offers a lower idle power and lower in-use power. Battery life is a very important differentiator. Menlow’s hardware video decoding (1080p using H.264) can be used to differentiate too but here’s something that is more interesting and you probably won’t hear any product manager talk about it in these terms. The Menlow platform goes up to 1.8Ghz and CPU speed is about the best differentiator a marketing group could hope for. In netbook quantities, I wouldn’t expect any noticeable difference in the price either. $20 at the till maybe. When your average netbook customer is standing with a Saturday sales rep. in the local electronics store and has a choice between a a Samsung NC10 at 1.6Ghz and an MSI Wind at 1.8ghz, for the same price, which one is the customer more likely to go for?

If this process works, if sales figures indicate a preference for 1.8Ghz, expect either a clock boost on the N270 CPU (which is likely of course) or, for the higher-end of the netbook market and the ultra portable notebook market, a lot more action with Menlow in 2009. From where we are sitting, it looks like Menlow could eat into even more of the traditional laptop market but if it’s a net gain for Intel, they won’t complain!

Check out the interesting interview and watch out for comments about Linux, touchscreens and a temporary HDD set-up.

An article on Wired yesterday alerted me to something I’ve been waiting for for a long time. High Quality H.264 videos on YouTube. [Update: YouTube have now announced a widescreen player.] Medium quality stereo H.264 vidoes have been available for some time using the fmt=18 trick [example] and you can even download them with an easy-to-use Firefox toolbar add-on but the availability of the 1280×720, possibly original-format versions, is a great step forward and with a tweak of that download toolbar, you can download them too which allows netbooks and other ultra mobile PC’s to play the files that would otherwise struggle trying to play  through the built-in H.264-enabled flash player. (Video below)

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Back in April, I published my thoughts on how MIDs could raise the bar for high-end PMPs. I wrote the article after I saw some interesting notes on the video hardware that was going to be included in Poulsbo (now called the System Controller Hub, the chipset that accompanies Z-series Atom CPUs.) When I got the Kohjinsha SC3 a few weeks ago it was the first chance I’d had to test a Menlow based device (Atom Z-series + SCH) so one of the first things I did was to download a high-end WMV file and play it in media player. I also downloaded Quicktime and the Klite Pack to get some H.264 support. What I saw was less than impressive.

At the same time, Jenn at Pocketables.net was doing similar tests with her SC3 and to cut a long story short, between us and the feedback of forum members and readers, we’ve ended up in a position where we’ve only found one commercial software package that will enable just one of the built-in hardware decoding features. H.264 [See Jenns article about 1080p on The Willcom D4.] On one hand its a poor result and a major disappointment. There’s no single player available that can support playback of all HQ content and if your content is wrapped up in DRM (iTunes films for example) there’s no support at all. It all sounds like quite a sad story. On the other hand the H.264 part of the story is good (no, excellent – 15mbps H.264 anyone?) and it looks like there’s more to come if Poulsbo can be unlocked further with the right software.  (article continues…)

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