Meet the MeeGo Netbooks. They’re Shipping Now.

Despite the controversy surrounding MeeGo after Nokia decided to hitch its wagon to Windows Phone 7, Intel is still promoting the platform in a major way. This week, the company introduced a new Tablet UX for MeeGo and it also devoted an entire pavilion to demonstrating the operating system’s ability to work in everything from handsets to in-car entertainment systems. When we visited the pavilion, we were surprised to see three MeeGo-based netbooks, which an Intel rep informed us are currently shipping to select markets.

Two of the three 10-inch netbooks on display were the Lenovo S10-3 and the Fujitsu MH330, now being sold with MeeGo in Russia or other parts of Asia. The third netbook, pictured above, is an iRU Intro 102, which has the standard netbook specs of a 1.66-GHz Atom N450 CPU, 1024 x 600 screen, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, and Wi-Fi. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about any of these systems, except the fact that major vendors feel MeeGo is ready to ship in those markets.

What MeeGo provides on these machines is a gorgeously simple tab-based UI, a strong web browsing experience, and a couple of nice apps with the potential for more when Intel eventually launches a MeeGo app store. We don’t know what Lenovo and Fujitsu’s strategy is here, but we can only guess that they are reaching out to people who want something really simple and user friendly, perhaps as a secondary device or as a primary device for someone who is not expecting all the bells and whistles of Windows or Mac OS. In that regard, these MeeGo netbooks remind us a little of the original Eee PC 701 and its tab-based Linux UI.

Check out the video below for a closer look at the MeeGo minis.