HP's soon-to-come netbook, the HP Mini 311-1000NR, is probably the first ION-powered 'accelerated' netbook showing the potential to attract the masses and hit the mainstream market!

The netbook, boasting Intel Atom CPU N270 and a GeForce 9400M GPU, is extremely powerful, and capable of outputting 720p video and playing some games - and, priced at $399, pretty affordable too!

Some of the notable features of the Mini 311 include 11.6-inch diagonal LED BrightView display, at 1366 by 768 pixels; 1GB of DDR3 memory; 160GB 5400RPM SATA hard drive; Nvidia ION LE with 319MB graphics memory; 802.11b/g WLAN; HP Webcam with integrated Digital Microphone; 5-in-1Digital Media Reader; and 3 USB ports - HDMI, VGA, RJ-45 LAN.

In addition, the 3.22-pound, 11.4-by-8-by-1.2-inch Mini 311 comes with a captivating white or black swirled lid, and runs theWindows XP Home Edition. The stylish netbook also features 92 percent of full-size keyboard, and 6-cell lithium-ion battery.

Though the forthcoming Mini 311 features the supposedly lower-end version, LE, of the Nvidia ION chip, the inclusion of chip by itself gives the rather impressive netbook a considerable boost in video and graphics performance, vis-à-vis the last-generation notebooks. Giving the netbok the advantage of running several processor-intensive tasks, the ION chip would apparently make a difference in real world performance!