These new netbooks are either just out, or soon to be released.

Anyone been able to lay their hands on one yet?

I need to know if they are as power efficient (or better) than the Intel Atom ones (which have inferior graphics capability).

And if you have, is the HD graphic capability is worth bothering with.

Here's the new Samsung N510, looks great. It even has HDMI out….

have a look on here:

http://www.mini-itx.com/

Reviews of various ION bits including the reference motherboard which should give some idea of their capabilities.

I'm thinking of building one up to use as a network media player/tv internet browser

i'll be having a look at some of the desktop ion systemswocne they are out to replace my aging xbox media centre as it doesn't have the horsepower to play hd video.

Yeah looks pretty good for that, think it should be good for 1080p thanks to the graphics card

I've just started to run a ZOTAC ION board in my HTPC frontend. Pretty impressive to be honest that it displays 1080p with only a case fan doing the cooling! Running Mythbuntu 9.04 and nvidia drivers.

Blu ray on a fanless small PC….at friggin last!

You do need one fan to be honest as it gets quite hot, but a single large fan can be pretty silent.

BTW, note that the ASUS ION board requires a CPU fan which is mean to be pretty noisy.