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Dell Inspiron Mini 12 is official at last

Posted by Al Warmington on Mon 27 Oct 2008

12" screen, Windows Vista... someone explain to Dell what a netbook is, please.

The Dell Inspiron Mini 12 must be one of the worst kept secrets in the tech world since the iPhone 3G. Even before the Mini 9 had reached shelves, Tesco had already blown the whistle by accidentally announcing it on its website.

Dell politely kept up the pretence of keeping it under wraps and has just got round to making the proper official announcement. So here's the specs: the new Inspiron Mini 12 is powered by an Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, and a choice of 60GB or 80GB HDD; connectivity includes WiFi and Bluetooth.

The physical dimensions are 229 x 300 x 23mm and it weighs in 1.22kg if you go for the 3-cell battery option. If you opt for the extended battery life of the 6-cell model, then the weight will be upped to 1.36kg; not a bad trade off, to be honest.

The screen is noteworthy for being 1280 x 800 pixels which is little better than standard netbooks. You've also got 3 USB ports, a card reader and an integrated web cam. Oh and one other thing: Windows Vista Basic.

At 12" this is now the biggest netbook on the market and the fact that Vista is your only option (for now) really makes us wonder if laptop makers would really rather we all got over this netbook thing and went back to the good old days of buying good, wholesome notebooks.

We have serious concerns about whether a 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM system will even make it beyond Vista's loading screen, so it's fortunate that a Windows XP and a Ubuntu Linux version will be made available fairly soon.

In the meantime, it costs $550 (around £360) and will be launching across the world in late November.

Dell (via PC Mag)