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Medion made a little name for itself in the European netbook market with the launch of the first Akoya Mini netbook in 2008. Sure, it was just a rebranded MSI Wind U100, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, since the Wind U100 was one of the best netbooks available at the time. Since then Medion has released a number of additional models under the Akoya name. The latest is the Medion Akoya E1222, which features a 10 inch display and 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 Pine Trail CPU.

The Medion Akoya E1222 will ship in Germany in March for about 299 Euros, or $408 US.

The notebook has 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, and a 1.3MP webcam. It has a glossy, 1024 x 600 pixel display and runs Windows 7 Starter Edition.

The Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t is one of a handful of netbooks with a touchscreen display and swivel allowing you to fold the screen over the keyboard and hold the computer like a tablet. With a starting price of $549, it’s one of the cheapest convertible tablets around, and at least until the Asus Eee PC T101MT is released, it’s the only 10 inch tablet-style netbook I’m aware of with an Intel Atom N450 Pine Trail processor.

The Wall Street Journal posted a brief review of the IdeaPad S10-3t. In a nutshell, the paper reports the touchscreen works pretty well, as does Lenovo’s touch-friendly software. But the glossy screen is a bit distracting when trying to watch movies or do much of anything else in tablet mode.

The reviewer also complains that the netbook feels kind of sluggish when launching applications. I get the feeling that this article was written by someone that doesn’t have a lot of experience with netbooks, though. So I can’t say for certain whether the S10-3t is any slower than other Intel Atom-based laptops. But there’s reason to believe that Lenovo will have a faster version with a zippier 1.83GHz Intel Atom N470 CPU soon. In fact, the N470-equipped version of this laptop was showing up on the Lenovo web site for a few days before being removed recently.

The HP Mini 311 comes with NVIDIA ION graphics and either an Atom N270 or N280 processor. That gives it more oomph in the graphics department than the vast majority of Atom-based netbooks and notebooks on the market. But as I pointed out in my review of the laptop, it generally feels a little sluggish when you’re performing tasks that don’t take advantage of the graphics processor, such as surfing the web.

Now members of the MyHPMini forums have begun using a hacked BIOS that makes it easier to overclock the laptop, allocate additional memory for graphics, and make other modifications.

Bear in mind, there’s a difference between making overclocking easier and making it easy. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you should probably avoid this hack, as you can easily void your warranty and leave your notebook in an unbootable state (although early testers report that there are ways to revive a partially bricked system).

Some users are reporting that they’ve gotten their HP Mini 311 laptops to run as fast as 2.2GHz. Not bad for a processor that normally tops out at around 1.7GHz.

Trigem has released a handful of netbooks under the Averatec brand name over the past few years. But the Averatec N1200 is prbably one of the best looking machines I’ve seen from this PC maker to date.

The Averatec N1200 features a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, a 10 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, 1GB of RAM, and 160GB hard drive. The notebook has Ethernet, VGA, and 2 USB ports and a 3200mAh battery. It runs Windows 7.

The screen is glossy, but the lid has a metallic, brushed-aluminum look although it’s not clear whether it’s actual metal or just gray plastic. It’s still pretty slick looking.

The notebook weighs less than 2.2 pounds and measures 12.8″ x 9″ x 1″.

No word on pricing yet.

When I reviewed the Asus Eee PC 1005PE, I didn’t really think the display was any dimmer than other netbook screens I’ve tested. But then, I tend to keep display brightness near the middle setting most of the time.

But if you’re looking for a brighter display, Asus has issued BIOS updates for the Eee PC 1005PE and 1001P which should make the screen brighter.The latest BIOS for each model is version 0804.

Members of the EeeUser forum report that the update also seems to affect the netbook’s fan speed. After applying the update, users report that the fan seems to change speeds less frequently.

Shuttle was making small form factor desktop computers long before the current nettop craze got started. But the company has been pretty happy to jump on the bandwagon with a number of tiny, low power desktops sporting Intel Atom processors. The latest is the Shuttle XS35, which should be on display at CeBIT next week.

The XS35 will have a 1.6GHz Intel Atom D510 dual core processor. It’s a barebones system, meaning the Shuttle XS35 won’t come with a hard drive, RAM, or operating system. But you will have room for a 2.5″ hard drive and a slimline optical disc drive. It also has VGA and HDMI output, Ethernet, and 5 USB ports.

But the exciting part is that the XS35 will also use NVIDIA GT218 graphics, which a Shuttle press release pretty explicitly says is synonymous with “NVIDIA ION 2.”

There’s no word on the price or exact dimensions, but Shuttle says the XSS35 will be just 1.3 inches thin, which ain’t bad for a compact system with a disc drive.

Taiwanese PC maker Gigabyte briefly added a product page to its web site for a new convertible tablet-stylenetbook called the T1000 today. And then it removed the page. Fortunately, you can still see Google’s cached version of the page.

The Gigabyte T1000 looks like an upgraded version of the Gigabyte T1028X TouchNote. Like the TouchNote it has a 10.1 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel touchscreen display that you can fold down over the keybaord for use in tablet mode. But the upcoming T1000 has a new Intel Atom Pine Trail processor.

To be more precise, it will be available with either a 1.66GHz Atom N450 or 1.83GHz Atom N470 CPU. I’m guessing it’s the latter option that caused Gigabyte to remove the product page. While I’ve seen several companies introduce products with theN470 CPU, Intel has yet to acknowledge its existence, and companies have a habit of pulling down pages that mention it.

Rounding out the Gigabyte T1000’s specs are 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, Intel GMA 3150 graphics, 2 USB ports, an eSATA/USB combo port, mic and headphone jacks, D-Sub and Ethernet jacks, a flash card reader, and an Express Card slot.

The laptop will also have 802.11b/g/n WiFi, and the option of a 4 or 6 cell batter. It looks like the 4 cell model will be called the T1000X, while the 6 cell model will be the Gigabyte T1000P.

The notebook measures 10.4″ x 8.4″ x 1.6″  and weighs 3.3 pounds with a 6 cell battery. The 4 cell version is a little thinner and lighter.

No word on pricing, but Gigabyte’s convertible tablet-style netbooks (or netvertibles), don’t tend to come cheap.

The One Laptop Per Child group is starting to send out test models of the new XO-1.5 laptop to members of their Contributors Program. The XO-1.5 is an updated version of the original XO laptop. The main difference is that the new model replaces the AMD Geode CPU with a faster VIA C7-M processor.

Unfortunately, it’s still pretty tough for the average Joe to get his hands on an XO-1.5. They’re not available for sale through retail channels, and even if you’re a contributor to the OLPC project, Wayan Vota at OLPC News points out that you still may not actually receive one of the new test models.

OLPC does say that volunteers doing outreach and advocacy work can submit a proposal for a free laptop. But something tells me you’ll have a little competition from other advocates trying to get their hands on an XO-1.5 the same way.

The Dell Mini 5 is generating a lot of buzz as an iPad alternative. It’s smaller, lighter, runs Google Android, and will function as both a phone as well as a 3G and WiFi internet tablet. But it looks like the Mini 5 may not be the only internet tablet Dell is working on. Dell’s tablet manager Neeraj Choubey tells CNN that the company will “have a family of tablets.”

In other words, the Dell Mini 5 is just the first product from the tablet division. But eventually we could see related products with larger (or smaller) displays.

There’s no word on how much the Mini 5 or other Dell tablets will cost yet, but Choubey says the goal is to keep the prices “competitive.” I can only imagine that means competitive with Apple’s upcoming iPad, which will range from $499 for a WiFi-only tablet to $830 for a model with additional storage and a3G modem.

The Intel Atom chips found in most netbooks include some nifty power management features that makes it easy to overclock or underclock the CPU depending on whether you want to prioritize performance or long battery life. Asus and a handful of other PC makers make it incredibly easy to toggle between high performance and power saving modes with software such as the Asus Super Hybrid Engine. But if you’re running a version of Linux that didn’t come with your netbook, you might not have access to these tools. And that’s where Jupiter comes in.

This Linux utility adds a power management applet to your system tray. You can use Jupiter to switch between maximum performance, high performance, and power saving modes. Jupiter also lets you adjust your computer’s screen resolution and orientation. And you can click a button to disable your netbook’s WiFi, webcam, or other hardware to save power when you don’t need those features.

Jupiter is based on the eeetray applet EeePC ACPI Utilities designed for Asus Eee PC netbooks. It should work with Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions. There’s also an RPM package available, which suggests that it should also work with Fedora, Red Hat, and similar Linux distributions.