Acer has added the ION 2 graphics processor to their Aspire 532 series netbook, boosting the capability to that of mid to high-end notebooks.

Until now, netbooks have used an integrated graphics controller. This has helped to keep costs down and battery life up but has come at the cost of diminished graphics performance. That wasn't much of a problem in the early days of the netbook when the devices were seen as "cheap and cheerful" systems that supplemented having a real computer in the office. However, the new Aspire 532g delivers a netbook with two graphic controllers. One is the GMA 3150 controller built into the Pine View chipset with an Intel Atom N450 CPU. The other is an NVidia ION 2.

It'll work like this. When you're doing a "basic" task like note-taking or email, the high powered controller will be inactive. For high-end tasks, like image manipulation, the ION 2 would engage and boost system performance. Apple employs a similar system in the high-end MacBook Pro systems although these require a restart to use the more powerful graphics card - even though it's possible in Windows systems to switch between in the inbuilt and separate controllers on the fly.

There's a video posted by Netbook News that does some show and tell.

By Anthony Caruana