Dell Mini Inspiron

[greggh]

http://gizmodo.com/393815/exclusive-del ... ini-laptop

I bumped into Michael Dell at All Things D after his interview, and he was nice enough to show me this laptop that he was carrying that he said no one's seen before. It's a small form factor notebook, just like the Asus Eee and the HP 2133. He wouldn't tell me what OS it's running, or the pricing, but that it's a low-cost notebook meant for developing countries, and I hope here. Maybe it's Atom-powered. Who knows?

[LinuxMint-4]

Another story on it

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/05/29 ... ee-alike/1


Dell has since released a couple of images of the machine on its blog. The idea for the notebook appears to have come from Dell's IdeaStorm website, as part of an article entitled “Design a UMPC to counter HP's mini-note 2133”. In that article, the specifications of the theoretical HP beater are listed as 2GB of RAM, an Intel Silverthorne or VIA Isaiah CPU, Vista or Linux as the OS, multiple USB ports, a multi-card reader, choice of 7,200 RPM hard drive or SSD, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth, and perhaps most wishfully of all – a graphics solution capable of running Windows Vista in Aero mode.

These specifications have been neither confirmed nor denied by the PC manufacturer, but it's clear that HP's svelte notebook was playing on Dell's mind during the design phase: the two photos released demonstrate scale through having a yellow pencil in the same shot, which is exactly how HP conveyed the size of their UMPC. I guess originality really is dead.

What is perhaps most interesting is comments made by Dell regarding the target audience for the new notebook: the Dell Blog has him describing it as “perfect for the next billion Internet users,” a clear indicator that Dell is looking to expand on its work shifting low-cost hardware to developing nations. Hopefully that doesn't mean that it won't be available to denizens of the UK and US.

Pricing information, final specifications, even confirmation that the thing really exists beyond an engineering prototype and a couple of pictures are not yet forthcoming. Perhaps Dell is looking to scope the market out a bit further before finalising the design, or maybe it's waiting for a large quantity of Atom chips to make themselves available at a reasonable price. Either way, it's clear we'll be seeing more competition in the low-cost ultra-portable notebook market in the not-too-distant future.