Last week Intel was fined record $1.45bn by the EU, but this didn’t stop the company from moving on, and it has released a new Atom processor and an operating system specially designed for netbooks. The new Intel Atom processor is called Pineview and it features the memory and the graphics controller on the same tiny piece of silicon. This processor technology is called Pine Trail, and it should become available in Q4 of 2009.

On the other hand, Intel’s netbook operating system is called Moblin, and many have said that it cannot compete against Windows XP or some Linux distros as the netbook OS market share is already taken by those 2. However, Intel released Moblin 2.0 which is a Linux distro therefore it’s available for free. Intel Moblin v2.0 was built to work with Atom processors on netbooks and nettops (or mini desktops).

Intel Pineview platform is based on only two chips, not three like before, and this will lower the manufacturing costs hence the costs of netbooks will lower, and the power consumption will go down too. Even if Pineview already features an integrated graphics card, users can always choose a NVIDIA Ion graphics card.

Intel Moblin will also lower the costs for a netbook, and the OS features a new user interface called M-zone (My Zone) which comes packed with e-mail tools, IM (instant messaging), social networking, and a media player. For now Moblin is used by only a very small share of netbook users, and all Linux distros represent 4.5% of the OS on netbooks. This means that it will be very hard for Moblin to resist and be used, but Intel says that Moblin v2.0 can be modified by computer manufacturers so that they can add their own brand, looks, and touches.

If you own a netbook and you have Moblin installed, then you might want to let us know how it works. I hope that you are very satisfied with it, and that you will enjoy Moblin 2.0 in the future.