A rumor has surfaced concerning an upcoming netbook from HP – the HP Mini 311 – sporting the snazzy Nvidia ION platform, of which we haven’t seen enough so far.

A supposedly leaked document from HP has revealed that the huge laptop manufacturer may very well be planning an new 11.6-inch netbook featuring the Nvidia ION, which consists of an Intel Atom processor coupled with the integrated 9400M graphics core, also found in the latest aluminum MacBook lineup.

Thus far we haven’t seen much of the ION after Nvidia’s presentation at CES last winter. Only a 12-inch Lenovo S12 netbook and the Samsung N510 have been unveiled, and both of them are still hard to come by.

The HP Mini 311c, as the netbook is apparently called, will come with all the standard netbook components including an Atom N270 at 1.6GHz, 160GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM. Not much to write home about, unless you include the ION LE – a slightly downclocked Nvidia chip for netbooks (that should still provide enough horsepower to kick Intel’s GMA950 out of the ring for good.)

The current Mini 110

It is slightly larger than the average netbook with an 11-inch screen – probably with the higher 1366×768 resolution to take advantage of the added graphics power – and weigh in at a little over three pounds.

Moreover – again, these are still just rumors – the new Mini 311c is expected to ship shortly after, or coinciding with the launch of Windows 7 and would be sold with the downgraded Windows 7 Starter Edition.

In spite of these potential setbacks, i.e., the down-clocked ION  and the less-than-full featured Windows 7 I could definitely go for one of these babies, especially since all HP netbooks (so far) ship with an excellent keyboard and a very eye-pleasing design. More news on this will be posted as soon the story is confirmed or updated.

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3. 41 MSI Laptops Now Windows 7 Certified – Including X-Slim and Wind Netbook
4. Samsung ION Netbook Dares to Slam Intel Fingers