Expect so-called "consumer ultra-low voltage" processor-based laptops to get rather faster in Q4 as Intel migrates the single-core CULV CPUs it's currently offering to dual-core alternatives.

The chip giant's current CULV line-up includes the single-core Core SU3xxx, Pentium SU2xxx and Celeron 7xx chips.

Come Q4, these will be superseded by the Core 2 Duo SU7xxx, Pentium Dual-Core SU4xxx and SU2xxx. The Celeron 7xx family will still be around, but pushed way to the bottom of the market.

There are dual-core CULVs available now: the Core 2 Duo SU9xxx series, and this will continue to be offered for 'performance'-class thin'n'light laptops through Q4.

The lower-end dualies will provide some of the processing power that netbook Atoms lack, though with many CULV chips now going into 11in machines, the boundary between netbooks and notebooks is now well and truly blurred.

Arguably, Atom, with its HyperThreading support, may be a better choice than a single-core Celeron 7xx machine, even though a number of vendors are pitching machines based on the latter as somehow more serious notebooks than Atom-based ones. ®

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