Dell Inspiron Mini 10 to debut later this month

The new Dell Inspiron Mini set to launch in UK on Feb 26th.

An official slide leaked out a few days ago

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and Mini 12 have been getting lots of attention lately. And it was only a matter of time before the World’s 2^nd largest computer manufacturer entered the darling 10-inch netbook market. The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 set to launch on 26^th February in UK.

The Inspiron Mini 10 aims to strike the perfect balance between functionality, pricing and size. It comes with a 10.1-inch LCD screen capable of displaying 1024x576 pixels. Dell explains it properly as "The Mini 10 starts out simple and becomes more complex from there."

It is powered by an Atom CPU, 1GB RAM, up to 160GB hard disk space and comes with a 3-cell battery (optional 6-cell), webcam, WiFi, Bluetooth and a card reader. Dell has also thrown in a HDMI connector, Windows XP SP3 and Intel's own GMA500 graphics solution. The 92% keyboard is the reason many would like to migrate to the 10-inch from a lower size, and it holds well against many formidable competitors like HP Mini 2140 and MSI Wind.

The touchpad does not have your traditional-styled mouse-buttons, but when you click, you are basically clicking the bottom part of the touchpad – as reported by PCMag. They also say that “In keeping up with the Apple theme, the touchpad supports multi-touch: With two fingers, for instance, you pan, pinch and enlarge most file types. Placing four fingers on the touchpad takes you to the desktop environment.”

At 1.3Kg, it is not as heavy as the Mini 12 but still manages to get an almost full size keyboard that's only 8 percent smaller than traditional laptop models – says ITproportal.

The 10-inch netbook has gained a lot of attention lately, as many of the vendors cutting their less sized machines to give attention to this variant. We’ve seen it with Asus, and also Acer stopping its 8.9-inch Aspire One completely to give way to the Aspire One 10-inch model.

The Mini 10 will be available in six different shades - Obsidian Black, Alpine White, Cherry Red, Pretty Pink, Ice Blue and Jade Green. This will retail at £299, and comes with Windows XP, although a Linux version is rumored to come out later this year as Cnet reports that Dell will introduce a 2GB model with 250GB HDD later this year with an integrated TV Tuner, Ubuntu 8.04 and Mobile broadband capabilities; one can also expect AMD to join the foray and Dual Core Atom CPUs to debut.