We have just received word from Dell that their highly anticipated Inspiron Mini 10 net book will be available for sale starting tomorrow. Initially, QVC will be selling the Mini 10 with a proprietary software and accessory bundle, but the Dell website will have units for sale starting on February 26 as well. As some of you remember, reports on Dell’s netbook first began to gain coverage after a journalist spotted it in the hands of Michael Dell, the company’s CEO. Shortly after that event, Dell confirmed that it was working on a netbook designed to compete with ASUS’ already vast Eee PC lineup.
The unit QVC will be offering tomorrow will be based on the Intel Menlow platform. It will have the Mini 10’s signature 10.1″ wide-screen SVGA display, an Intel Atom Z530 1.66GHz processor with a 533MHz front side bus, 1GB of RAM, a relatively spacious 160GB hard drive, a 1.3MP integrated webcam, and 802.11G Wi-Fi in addition to 10/100 wired Ethernet. The systems will be available in six colors at launch, and will run Windows XP initially, but Dell will also be rolling out Linux and Vista options at some point in the future.
In addition to the aforementioned features, the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 sports three USB ports, an integrated multi-card flash reader, headphone and microphone jacks, SRS audio enhancement technology, and an HDMI output. And initial configurations will include a 3-cell battery that offers about three hours of battery life. Dell plans to offer optional TV tuners, a 720P HD display, Bluetooth, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Design studio personalization over the next few months. A 2GB memory option and other Z-family Atom processors will eventually be available as options as well. Dell direct versions of the Inspiron Mini 10 will be priced at around $399 and up depending on the configuration; the QVC version will be sold at a somewhat higher price due to its software and accessory bundle. While performance for most net book user opt for some internet surfing and some word processing apps like word or other windows apps, but with the only processor available to the size of the net book is only the Intel Atom series or the other rivals Via nano processors that have the same ego with the Atom series or even the upcoming new AMD Neo platform for most net books. We would still see some improvement on the graphics performance with the NVIDIA ion series can be placed to substitute the much larger Intel chipset, giving the user a much brilliant decoding and video playback and still small enough to fit in your back pocket.
We will still see some of the specs later on, but it looks nice to have a cheap alternative to laptop use and mobile computing.
