In case you haven’t looked at your calendar in a while, October 22nd is next week. I know, I was kind of shocked too, but there it is. And that means that Windows 7 will be available to the general public a week from Thursday. And along with the latest version of Windows we can expect a whole slew of new computers to hit the shelves, as well as minor updates to existing PCs.

Acer has announced it’s taking the latter route with its current flagship netbook, the Acer Aspire One D250. Starting on the 22nd, it ill be available with Windows 7 and a new high resolution 1280 x 720 pixel display. It will also have a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drie, and a choice of a 3.5 hour or 7.5 our battery.

The netbook will ship with Windows 7 Starter Edition and it will be available in Japan for ¥46,800 or about $520 US. Odds are it’ll be significantly cheaper in the US, although it’s not entirely clear whether it will ship in the US on the same day.

via PC World and Akhibara News

If you’d asked me a few months ago which new netbook features we’d start to see in 2009 I probably would have said touchscreen displays, faster processors, and alternate operating systems including Google Android. But we’re almost halfway through the year and while the touchscreen Asus Eee PC T91 is due out any day now, the only two touchscreen netbooks available are the the Gigabyte Touch Note and laptops based on the Intel Classmate PC design. Processors haven’t gotten much faster (yet) and Google Android netbooks are still in the early works. But you know what is taking off this year? Higher resolution netbook displays.

The HP Mini 2140 and Dell Inspiron Mini 10 are already available with high resolution 10 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel screens. And now Macles reports that Acer is preparing a new Aspire One 571 with a 10.1 inch 1280 x 720 display. To help with decoding H.264 and high definition video, the mini-laptop features a Quartics Q1721 multimedia coprocessor which handles hardware decoding and encoding of H.264 and several other codecs.

Macles also reports that Acer has taken a rather baffling step of including an unusual optical disc drive that supports Vmedia, which are kind of like tiny Blu-Ray discs which can hold about 1GB of data.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that the Acer spire One 571 will cost at least a few bucks more than most Acer netbooks thanks to that optical disc drive, HD media coprocessor, and high resolution display. But there’s no official word on pricing or availability yet.

As expected, HP has begun offering HP Mini 2140 customers the choice of a higher resolution, 1366 x 768 pixel display. Up until this week, the only display option for this netbook was a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 576 pixel screen. The higher resolution display costs just $35 more, and makes the HP Mini 2140 one of the few netbooks to come with a sharp enough display to show true 720p HD video. The other is the Dell Inspiron Mini 10.

The good news is neither HP nor Dell are charging an arm and a leg for the upgraded screen. You can choose a 1366 x 768 pixel display from Dell for just $35 extra. HP charges just $25.

Update: If you want to pick up a model with the higher resolution display without spending over $600, make sure to check out the “smart buy” options. You can find the HP Mini 2140 with a 1366 x 768 pixel display for as low as $479. thanks Teuron!

via Netbook Choice