Pat Moorhead, VP of AMD’s Advanced Platform Development, recently shared on his blog his vision of the perfect mini-notebook. Moorhead actually has two dream devices; one for around-the-house entertainment and multimedia use, and another for use on the road.

His at-home mini-notebook would focus on a larger (13”) screen than is found on most subnotebooks or netbooks. It would also serve as a humble, but capable gaming machine and have HD video display capability, not to mention a good Web browsing experience and a reasonable battery life. His ideal road warrior notebook would be much smaller (10” screen or less) and retain XGA resolution. Three other crucial elements: Strong battery life, light-weight size, and built-in cellular broadband to connect to the Internet anywhere.

These sound like a far cry from the Intel Atom-powered netbooks, which cannot handle graphics-intensive games or HD video. Moorhead attacks netbooks throughout the post, implying that they are underpowered and their screen resolutions are too small.

Will Moorhead’s dream notebooks ever come to market? Possibly. But why even have two types of notebooks for home and on-the-road use? Couldn't the specifications be melded into one device that has six hours of battery life, a dedicated GPU to handle HD video and gaming graphics, a strikingly thin form factor, and weighs half as much as the average Dell or Lenovo laptop?

It's not out of the realm of possibility. Indeed, these specs sound a lot like what can already be found in the MacBook Air. The Air features an nVidia 9400M GPU, and also gets much better battery and performance thanks to its solid-state drive. The only thing that's missing is built-in cellular broadband and a slightly smaller screen.

Unfortunately for Moorhead, the Air is not powered by AMD chips, but it is available now, and is probably a sign of things to come in the high-end notebook market.