[Fanfoot]

Right now the situation with HD Flash content (Hulu in HD say) on netbooks isn't looking so good. Your typical netbook stutters and can't play it back smoothly. This appears to be true whether you're using an N or Z-series Atom processor, whether you're using integrated Intel graphics or Ion (since Adobe doesn't do any GPU offload for Flash), etc.

For example:

AnandTech: Zotac's Ion: The World's First mini-ITX Ion Board

tests the Zotac Ion nettop using a 230 and an Ion can't handle HD Flash.

However:

jkkmobile: Meet RunCore Pro IV.. A really fast SSD

tests the new Runcore IV SSD in a Dell Mini 10 and he says it now handles Flash HD just fine. So with the right SSD a netbook can handle HD Flash.

Even the HP Pavilion dv2 running AMD's Neo processor apparently can't handle HD Flash at this time.

I wonder what it will take to get this working smoothly on the typical netbook without spending a lot of money... can you tweak the CPU speed on an ASUS up to 1.8GHz and solve the problem? Will Adobe finally support GPU offloading? Will Pineview CPUs at 2.0GHz fix the problem?