We’ve been waiting a long time for this. We first heard about Nvidia’s next-generation Ion chip  way back in the first months of 2010. They were supposed to ship with Nvidia’s Optimus graphics-switching technology back in April. Okay, June. July at the latest. It didn’t quite happen—those few next-gen Ion netbooks that did launch earlier this year did so without Optimus. At long last, however, Asus’ next-gen Ion netbook—with Optimus and a dual-core netbook Atom chip—has hit American shores, just one day before September.

The Eee 1215N, one of Asus’ innumerable Eee PC Seashell netbooks, is the first netbook we’ve seen with Intel’s new mobile dual-core Atom chips—it ships with the 1.8GHz Atom D525, 2GB of DDR3/800 RAM, and most importantly, Nvidia’s next-generation Ion graphics chipset and Optimus technology, which enables Ion when required and switches to Intel’s integrated UMA graphics when Ion isn’t necessary.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

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Hot on the heels of Intel announcing no less than 12 upcoming netbooks to be shipped built around its new dual-core Atom N550 processor, Asus appears to have beaten the competition to the punch with its Eee PC 1015PEM.

This latest Eee PC packs the aforementioned dual-core Atom part, as well as 2GB of DDR3 memory, Intel GMA 3150 graphics, Bluetooth 3.0, 250GB hard drive, 801.11g Wi-Fi, 1.3MP webcam, and according to at least one report. USB 3.0 support.

While Asus can claim the first to ship an N550-based netbook, it certainly won't be the last. Lenovo is currently taking pre-orders for its IdeaPad S10-3, while Gigabyte is serving up (also in pre-order form) a convertible tablet (T1005M) built around Intel's newest Atom chip.

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The big question mark surrounding tablets is whether or not this emerging market will eat into netbook sales, or if the two segments can co-exist. If Asus' recent netbook performance is any indication, we may have our answer.

Asus only managed to sell 1.5 million netbooks in the second quarter, a drop of 100,000 units over the first quarter and short of the company's expectations. As a result, Asus president and CEO Jerry Shen recently told investors that Asus had to downward adjust its target shipments for the third quarter, which he blames on competition from Apple's iPad.

It's been somewhat of a rough year all around for Asus. Along with disappointing netbook sales, decreased shipments of motherboards and traditional notebooks have taken a toll on the company's financial performance, which declined during the second quarter.

What's interesting about this is that the tablet game is largely a one-man show, but will soon become crowded as 2010 comes to a close. Is this the beginning of a trend?

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It's not uncommon for PC makers to dabble in both the low- and high-end markets, and every spot in between, but should Asus target the budget crowd, channel vendors believe the company could risk its reputation and damage its brand image, Digitimes reports.

So what's the big fuss? Those who feel this way point to the recent launch of an Asus-branded all-in-one PC selling for about $375 in Taiwan, the lowest price for such a machine so far. Up to this point, channel vendors say Asus has pushed its products as boutique items, not blue light specials.

Naturally, Asus doesn't see it the same way and said that the low-cost all-in-one is simply to fill market demand. But there's yet another explanation floating around, with some analysts saying Asus could be saddled with surplus components and is trying to make the best of a bad situation by moving lower cost products.

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