It was designed to be an ultra-low-power processor to be used in a tiny netbook. I have a slow Atom in my Acer netbook and it is slow – but it works fine for what it was designed for: email and web surfing. I use only that netbook for several weeks in Europe and managed to use it for sorting and even minor edits to photos without a problem (500GB HD helped). I have a Core Duo CPU in my laptop that I left home because it was much too big and heavy…

atom processor-computers-notebooks

Intel isn’t abandoning the Atom – it’s been a huge success for them. They’re just making the Atom faster. They’ve also got a low power version of the Core CPU called the Core Solo (aka SU series) that’s in some “long life” notebooks but not really netbooks that I’ve seen. Actually there’s an Acer 11.6″ “notebook” that’s got the Core Solo SU in it that replaced my Acer 11.6″ that had an Atom in it, but the battery life isn’t as good as mine is with the same battery.

So no, I don’t think you’ll find a Core 2 in a netbook soon – too power hungry, generates too much heat for the small size needed. You’ll find a faster Atom though – or you can get a small notebook with a low power SU version in there.