The Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta 3 has been released. The latest version provides hardware acceleration support for Intel Atom Z-series processors with GMA 500 integrated graphics. So if you have a netbook with an Atom Z520/Z530/Z550 processor and GMA 500 graphics, you will be able to watch HD Flash video of up to 1080p using the latest version of Flash player.
GMA-500
Unfortunately, this update doesn’t enable HD video playback on netbooks with Intel Atom N270/N280 processors and GMA 950 graphics. This is because while the integrated GMA 500 graphics provides hardware acceleration for H.264 video, the GMA 950 graphics doesn’t offer hardware acceleration.

Some of the laptops featuring an Atom Z-series processor include the Sony VAIO P, Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (older version), Asus Eee PC T91MT, Asus Eee PC 1101HA, MSI Wind U115, Viliv S10 Blade and Fujitsu UH900.

Support for Flash acceleration will not improve the overall performance of a netbook. In fact, the Atom Z520 and Z530 processors are slower than the Atom N270 and N280 processors. The 2GHz Atom Z550 processor, however, is known to be snappy.

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