OStatic

Adding to the momentum surrounding the Android operating system, Asus is demonstrating a netbook powered by a 1-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset at the Computex show in Taipei. Many people believe that Android has a bright future on netbooks, especially as mobile applications proliferate for it. Android appears to be very snappy running on the Qualcomm chip, which offers 720p video playback support. You can see a video of the demonstration here.?

These days, computers and software are central to how a lot of the music that you hear is produced. Many top recording artists use ProTools and other proprietary applications to edit and mix songs, and there are newfound opportunities for garage musicians to make professional quality recordings using customized hardware and software. As noted on the Musician's Friend site, Linux fans with musical abilities may want to take note of the new $499 Indamixx Netbook MKII. It runs a Linux multimedia operating system called Transmission 3.0 that has a pre-loaded, ready-to-go set of applications for editing, mixing, and recording music.

A few days ago we reported on efforts from Freescale, Asus and others to take netbooks--many of them running Linux--down to the $200 range. CherryPal may be approaching that price with its new Intel Atom-based Bing netbook (shown) that runs either Linux or Windows XP. The price is undisclosed until it ships in March, but this week only CherryPal is offering it and its C114 green nettop system in tandem for $400, as LinuxDevices reports. The price for the combo, given the C114's normal $250 price, imply that CherryPal is exploring how low portable computer prices can go.