The primary cause why we have seen such a pack of ‘cookie-cutter’ netbooks is due to hardware restrictions in place from both Intel and Microsoft. Both companies don’t want this ‘value’ segment consuming into profitable margins from their premium offerings.

The coming of Windows 7 has seen storage limitations upped by 160GB to 250GB, though most of these Windows 7 Starter models still only attach to 1GB RAM. This will change, yet, with the approaching 1.83GHz N470 Atom (Pineview) processors. Fudzilla is describing that Intel will be lifting the RAM limitations on netbooks using this central processing unit.

This relaxation will come after March 2010 just only for the N470 Atom and not for the slower 1.66GHz N450 Atom. The N470 Atom will attach to a NM10 southbridge also integrated graphics. Intel has directed to a price range of $299-$349 for these models, although I am sure they’ll be pricier than that. It’s also directed to computer storage of 160GB HDD or SSDs ‘tween 20-32GB. Somewhat cheekily it even recommends using Moblin Linux as the OS of choice (by the way moblin was developed by Intel.)