A new Lenovo IdeaPad was just shuffled through the FCC, who kindly took some pictures and made them public for the rest of us to see. Thanks to a detailed specs sticker on the backside, we know this is going to be a new netbook based on Intel’s forthcoming Pineview platform.

This new netbook looks like an interesting piece. The system buttons have moved from above the keyboard to being integrated into the display bezel. The keyboard also stretches edge-to-edge a bit more and overall looks like it might be a bit bigger than the IdeaPad S10-2′s keyboard. The fingerprint-happy finish is there, but you’ll also notice something major missing: touchpad buttons.

In all likelihood, Lenovo ditched the traditional touchpad buttons in favor of the touch-to-click feature that Apple initially popularized and now can be seen on other machines, including HP’s Envy 13 premium laptop. I’ve played a bit with the Envy 13 while it’s been in the Logic labs and don’t mind the touch-to-click, even the right-click is natural with an actual clicking action built into the touchpad. As long as Lenovo does their homework on the usability, this could work out fine and save the space of the two touchpad buttons.

EDIT: Looks like this new touchpad could be the Synaptics Clickpad. I wonder what HP uses in the Envy 13.

You’ll also notice that the keyboard has moved to a chiclet style, like the rumored ThinkPad netbook, and the arrow keys are slightly subset from the rest of the keyboard. This particular model will have a 1.66GHz Intel Pineview processor, which is likely the Atom N450, and comes with 2GB RAM and a 250GB HDD. While the display is the netbook standard 10.1-inch 1024×600, the rest of the specs are a nice step up from the standard netbook fare.

We talked a bit about Pineview back in May, the new Atom processor that will combine the CPU and GPU on a single chip to reduce cost and power consumption. Higher performance processors will also be available and Pineview should help bring some profit margin back into the netbook game.

Source: [Slashgear]