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Underpowered, cramped keyboard, not-so multimedia friendly tags bestowed on netbooks will be a thing of the past. Lenovo has announced its first 12-inch IdeaPad netbook, S12 that also happens to be the first netbook based on Nvidia’s ION platform. For the uninitiated, the ION platform is cooked up together with Intel’s Atom processor and Nvidia’s 9400M GPU.

The 12-incher promises to give a full 1080p playback, full sized keyboard, WXGA LED backlit screen, 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB RAM, up to 320GB HDD, LAN, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3 USB 2.0 ports, ExpressCard slot, card reader, VGA or HDMI out (depending on model) and optional 6-cell battery.

Lenovo will start selling in US from next month with the price starting from $449.

PS: Laptop-Mag have published their hands-on but the unit was sans ION, powered by a Via Nano processor.

If the hefty fine and an abusive monopolist tag was not enough for the chip maker, former friend turned foe have accused Intel of unfair pricing. Nvidia’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang told Reuters that Intel’s Atom chip pricing is unfair but won’t seek the legal way, at least for now.

According to him, Intel uses price discrimination by selling a single Atom chip for $45 but sells a three-chip set for $25.

Intel on the other hand refutes Nvidia’s accusation by saying that they compete fairly. “We do not force bundles on any computer makers and customers can purchase Atom individually or as part of the bundle. If you want to purchase the chip set, obviously there is better pricing.”

Nvidia and Intel are already locked in a lawsuit which started with Nvidia using Atom chips for the sale of its own ION platform.