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Hot on the heels of news that the Samsung N510 will be available in the US starting next month come two intriguing bits of information about the first NVIDIA ION-powered 11.6 inch laptop from Samasung:

• Netbook News Italia discovered a product listing indicating that the netbook will use the ION LE platform rather than the standard NVIDIA ION. What’s the difference? ION LE is designed specifically for Windows XP and includes support for DirectX 9, but not DirectX 10 which is only available in Windows Vista and 7. In other words, it’s a bit cheaper and you won’t get as much performance you might expect if you upgrade the operating system.
• Netbook Choice uncovered a document indicating that the Samsung N510 may not be the only model in the company’s N5xx series. The document also lists N511 and N508 models.

It’s not clear how the N511 and N508 would differ from the N510. Netbook Choice suggests that the screen size or processor could be different in one or both of these models. If it turns out that the Samsung N510 really does use the ION LE platform, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these other models includes the standard NVIDIA ION platform with DirectX 10 support. After all, these new models haven’t been officially announced yet, so they probably won’t hit the streets for a few more months. And Windows 7, which supports DirectX 10, and which runs much better on netbooks than Windows Vista, is due out on October 22nd.