Dell 10in Inspiron – not so inspiring?

Dell is to release its new 10 inch netbook on Thursday. Initially it will have XP installed, have 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive and a 1.33GHz Intel Atom CPU.  You also get Wi-Fi in the form of 802.11 b/g. In the future, you will be able to buy the netbook with faster CPUs, bigger hard drives, and more RAM. An option to have Ubuntu pre-installed is also happening later in the year. You can even have an HSDPA 3G module and TV tuner if you want.

What makes this new netbook from Dell so fantastic and special? Not much. In fact it is symptomatic of the way netbooks seem to be going. If we cast our mind backs all the way to the release of the Asus EEE PC 701, back in late 2007, we remember a 7 inch screen, a 4GB SDHC hard disk, and a version of Xandros Linux installed.it was the computer equivalent of a go-cart, light, and fun. We are now starting to see the screen size getting bigger, more and more features being crammed in. In fact the difference between netbooks and regular laptops are getting more and more blurred. And the price seems to be going the same way as the screen size. The original idea of the netbook was to be a small, light, utilitarian computer that would be available to all. The 701 was going to be a sub £100 netbook, based on the OLPC project. This idea has been slowly eroded and the cheap netbooks that were so interesting, are becoming more and more boring. You can, of course, still buy the smaller netbooks and even the good old 701, although the price is still a bit high for my liking. I would like to see more of the the smaller netbooks coming through, although they encroch on the space the more expensive compact laptops used to inhabit.

Source: Dell.com