Toshiba Announces Its New AMD Netbook, The NB550D

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Sure, netbooks get kind of a bad rap–they aren’t as fully-featured as laptops, and they’re less portable than tablets. They’re stuck firmly in the middle as far as value goes, and often end up overlooked. But Toshiba’s new netbook might have you thinking twice, and the NB550D is going to bring a lot more than you might expect to the table.

Word is, the NB550D will be packing a dual core AMD C50 processor running at one GHz, a ten inch LED display with a Radeon HD 6250M (also from AMD, interestingly enough), a set of Harman Kardon speakers built in, HDMI output for when that ten inch screen doesn’t cut it, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, a gig of ram, a 250 gig hard drive, Windows 7 Home Premium operation, and, get this: a six cell battery set to put out 9.5 hours of run time on a single charge.

You’ll even have a variety of color choices right out of the gate; pictured above is the green model, but you’ll also have orange and brown to work with. Not sure I’d like brown so much, but between green and orange, there’s plenty for folks who like a little extra color in their hardware without going the full-on Colorware route. I’d wonder how well this did on video performance–that looks pretty good, sure, but I’d definitely want to see it, as that might make a terrific mobile video platform.

And there’s no denying that that spec sheet is pretty nice for a netbook; I know some people who aren’t running those specs on their standard desktop.

We don’t yet know, though, just how much this will cost, or when it will be released, though Toshiba might well be poised to show the NB550D off out at CES when it opens up next week. But word is that Toshiba’s planning to put this one on shelves by spring 2011.