LiVe LiFe To The FuLLThe world is moving ! Don’t stay behind…

You might not be getting you hands on that Calpella any time soon, but that isn’t a sign that Intel is backing down — if anything, the company has big things in store, including a newly announced $7 billion plan to upgrade four of its Stateside facilities so they can start rolling out those new-fangled 32nm chips we’ve been hearing so much about. This is good news for the struggling American manufacturing sector, and great news for fans of smaller, faster gadgets — but not particularly great news for AMD, who entered the new year with a $1.4 billion loss and an eroding share of the x86 processor market.

Intel will include a new Linux-based operating system in netbooks in the near future, as the operating system in question is known as Moblin 2 at this point in time in its alpha state. This new operating system was specially designed to run on Atom-based devices, delivering superior boot times and an unique Internet connection manager. At this point in time, it will be shipped as a standard installation of the lightweight Xfce desktop environment as a placeholder while it’s still in the alpha stage, alongside programs including Pimlico and the aforementioned unique Internet connection manager. So far initial tests have shown that Moblin 2 runs A-OK on the Acer Aspire One, Dell Mini 9 and the Eee PC 901. What do you think of the Moblin 2 and its impact in society?

With all sorts of tech giants releasing bad news lately, Intel seems to be holding its own. As AMD sheds divisions and multiple thousands of employees, its direct competition has thus-far announced a single round of layoffs, closing a manufacturing facility in the Philippines. Now, however, Intel is taking a little off the top, with Chairman and 35-year veteran Craig Barrett stepping down in May. Barrett, who turns 70 in August, has been at the helm of the most recognizable CPU maker in the world since 1974 and, while he got the company through the bursting .com bubble, it looks like he’s wisely decided to sit this recession out. We wish him a relaxing retirement in some idyllic former-executive paradise, and also wish Jane Shaw, his successor, an awful lot of luck — she’s going to need it.

Some details have emerged about Intel’s Atom N280 processor, the successor to the wildly popular N270 that drove last year’s netbook craze. In short, it’s not looking like much of an update.

The N280 gets three performance boosts: the speed will inch up from 1.6GHz to 1.66GHz, the front side bus will climb from 533MHz to 667MHz, and the bundled graphics hardware, the Intel GN40, will likely fare better than the old 945GSE in terms of Blu-ray playback and light gaming.

Despite a H2 2009 expected release, which would make the Atom more than a year old, this by all counts incremental upgrade will cost end users $14-$19 dollars more than the current-gen processor, with the chipset. This doesn’t sound like much until you consider that the Atom sells for a mere $46, and that some of the netbooks it’s bundled with can dip below $300.

A likely reason for planning this refresh is added pressure from Nvidia’s Ion graphics unit, which promises huge increases in graphics performance in Atom netbooks over Intel’s lethargic offering.

Having mentioned that the Atom N280 processor has mushroomed at CES, it is interesting to note that Acer, Gigabyte Technology and Asus will be rolling out a fair number of 10″ netbooks sometime between the second and third quarter of the year. These CPUs will be bundled with Intel’s GN40 chipset and is nearly 50% more expensive compared to its predecessor, as the Atom N280 is priced at $60-65 in thousand-unit tray quantities, while the Atom N270 is much more affordable at $46 for a similar amount. Do you think the introduction of a beefier processor will help in terms of netbook sales, or does it really matter?

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