Dell Mini 10 will get GPS next week

After much fuss, Dell lets the cat out of the bag.

Getting all techie..

The popular Dell Mini 10 will be available with in-built GPS facility from next week in US. It will come in the form of an internal GPS card that comes with built-in Wi-Fi locationing. Co-Pilot Live is the software that will help you navigate though that shortest route to the party location this same night next week.

"With the recent buzz around the forthcoming TomTom navigation app for the iPhone and recent report that demand for GPS-enabled devices is expected to grow steadily over the next few years, there's no question that there's a lot of interest in the technology. We're betting that location services will be a hit in netbooks as well. Starting next week in the United States, we're offering the Dell Wireless 700 location solution for our Mini 10 netbook that is a combination of hardware and software,"says Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca.

The Dell Wireless 700 is powered by Broadcom's A-GPS and Skyhook Wireless' Wi-Fi position solutions. The Dell Wireless 700 seems to use Wi-Fi access points and Long Term Orbit (LTO)-based Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) technology to determine location information, so that it can provide a fast, accurate and reliable location source to applications and services by leveraging the strength of each underlying position technology - according to Mr. Menchaca.

Another loccation-based services they are planning to provide is the location aware portal. Lionel says Dell partnered with Skyhook Wireless and Loki, which is a browser plugin that comes preconfigured for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

the Dell Mini 10 has a as-the-name-suggests 10.1” panel along with a 16:9 WSVGA (1024x576) display. The 720p HD display (1366x768) comes as an option, as is the integrated TV tuner. With both screens, you can expect an "edge-to-edge display" and a "super thin design" at just 21mm of total thickness. There is also be option of two processors - a 1.3GHz or 1.6GHz Intel Atom Silverthorne CPU. There’s no built-in optical drive, but it has an optional “DVD slice” which presumably clips onto the base of the netbook.