Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - netbook or notebook?

Do you know what a netbook is? Well a netbook is basically an inexpensive, lightweight secondary laptop to fulfill basic computing needs like web surfing and e-mail. Pretty handy if you're a fellow blogger like me. This line of PCs were made popular by Asus and Eec recently. It seems that Dell has decided to jump into this bandwagon as well.

It has been known for some time that Dell has been working on a small inexpensive line of notebooks following the likes of Asus and Eec. Dell has recently announced the launch of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 which runs on Intel's Atom CPU. You can trust Dell to offer this laptop with various customizable options and the basic netbook costs around $349.

The unit is pretty slim at 1.25 inches, tapering towards the front. It also comes in a glossy black finish or a white model. The unit has three USB ports, headphone and mic jacks, a VGA out, SD card slot, and an Ethernet jack. If you open the lid, the 8.9-inch 1,024x600 screen shares space with a Webcam above and two small speaker grilles below. The biggest challenge is to cramp a keyboard with keys that are wide enough for most of us to punch. But it looks like Dell has done a decent job of it as well.

The model with the smaller hard drive (4 or 8GB), 512MB of RAM, an Ubuntu Linux OS, or knocking out the Webcam retails at around $349. The higher end model is with 1GB of RAM, a 16GB solid state hard drive and loaded with Windows XP. This configuration costs around $514. If you are looking for a notebook just for surfing, doing emails and listening to music this is the right model for you. This netbook is value for money, ultra portable and more of a general purpose PC.

Tags: dell inspiron,netbook