MSI confirms plans for touchscreen netbook with Pine Trail CPU

Last week there was a rumor going around that MSI planned to launch a netbook with a convertible touchscreen display and a processor based on Intel’s upcoming Pine Trail-M platform. Today Gizmodo’s Joanna Stern (if the name sounds familiar, it’s because she used to be Laptop Magazine’s “netbook diva”) has received confirmation from MSI. And the netbook has a name too: The MSI Wind U150.

It sounds like there are still a few things up in the air. For instance, Intel claims it will launch the Pine Trail platform before the end of the year, while MSI says it will launch at CES. Either way, MSI plans to be one of the first companies to launch a netbook based on the platform.

While we’ve been hearing that Pine Trail’s big advantage over the current generation of Atom processors would be in energy consumption rather than performance, MSI’s Andy Tung reportedly says the new chipset also features better graphics performance.