After recently adding a 32GB SSD option, Dell appears to be the first in the US to sell a netbook in the with a 3G radio and an actual data plan through a carrier. While some carriers in other countries are subsidizing the entire netbooks bundled with a 3G modems, you won’t get that sort of discount here. At least it won’t cost you much extra, provided you sign up with a 2 year contract from AT&T. It looks as though the modem can only be added to a Mini 9 configured with XP at this point.

Adding the HSDPA modem to your Mini 9 [Portal page] configuration will also add $125 to the bill, however you can reclaim $120 of that through a rebate if you sign up with AT&T. So an extra $5 for a 3G modem doesn’t sound bad right? Unfortunately it isn’t the hardware that makes up the real cost, it is the data plan, which will run you $60/month from AT&T. Brad from Liliputing points out that for some, it might be more cost effective to use an AT&T 3G USB dongle if you own more than one mobile computer. It would cost the same amount per month, but offer the flexibility of using one piece of 3G hardware on more than one computer.

[Liliputing]

We’ve seen it done to several other netbooks in the past and now it is the Dell Mini 9’s turn. Jkk points us to a video of a Dell Mini 9 [Portal page] that has been modded with a touchscreen. He says that any of the common 8.9" touchscreen kits can be used with the mod, but connecting the necessary components could be tricky. Check out a short video below:

Maybe in honor of jkk’s ‘SSD week’ last week, Dell has recently put an option into their Mini 9 configuration interface that allows customers to select 32GB of SSD storage (previous max capacity offered was 16GB). It will add $100 to your price if you jumping up from the 4GB option, but that price isn’t too bad as long as the speed of the SSD is decent. Be sure to stop by jkkmobile for lots of good info on SSDs with good price:speed ratios. If you are the hardware type, it may be more effective to buy the cheaper 4GB SSD option on a new Mini 9, and upgrade it yourself.

[Engadget]

Asus was the first to offer a quality notebook down in the sub-$300 range and it looks like Dell is following their example. Apparently a leaked advertisement shows that Dell will be offering the Inspiron Mini 9 [Portal page] netbook for just $299 on Black Friday. The most likely thing that you will find is the lowest end model which is configured with an 8GB SSD, 512MB of RAM, and Ubuntu as the OS (check the Portal page for additional specs). Buying a model that is configured with those specs today would run to $349. Happy shopping!

[Liliputing]

For those of you who love OSX, but also love low cost netbooks, it might be your lucky day. Liliputing is linking to a very handy guide for putting OSX on a Dell Mini 9. Over at TUAW, Steven Sande has put together a nice guide compilation that shows everything you need to get Leopard running on the recently released Dell Mini 9 netbook. Sande calls it the "Little Leopard Laptop", which could made the funny acronym of LLL to compete with the EEE.

If creating a Frankenstein’s monster of PC and OSX components scares you, patience may provide useful as Sande says he is "…sure that Apple will announce a low-cost netbook soon", though in all probability that is just speculation.

If Intel can prevent OEM’s from using the Dual Core CPU in their netbook and notebook designs, how come they can’t stop Dell using the Z-Series Atom in a notebook? Just as the Dual-core CPU could damage notebook sales, so to could putting a 12" screen on a netbook, even if it didn’t have a dual-core CPU inside.

I was alerted to this misnomer [hmmm wrong word perhaps. Anomaly?] today via a brief news item today from Tony Smith of The Register who draws the conclusion that the name of a leaked Dell device that will go on sale at UK supermarket Tesco,  the Z530, means it will have an Atom Z530 inside. Actually he’s right because if you look back to the early leaks, you find a 12.1" ‘E-Slim’ device based on Silverthorne. Dell are actually going to throw a device right into the middle of the consumer laptop arena and give it netbook-style pricing. This is the danger zone and possibly the beginning of the end for netbooks as we knew them.

Why the Silverthorne CPU and Poulsbo chipset though? Style, Battery life and video. It’s going to be a normal laptop aimed at ‘pro-sumers’ and the ‘Youth social networking/entertainment’ customers. They are aiming for a cheap, super-slim device with ‘all day’ battery life with high-end video playback support and the only way they can do it is to move to the latest Intel MID silicon. I like the idea myself. I have a UMPC (Still haven’t pulled the trigger on a new Q1 U HSDPA yet though) and a stylish, 12" ultralight with long, long battery life and high-end hardware decoded video playback would suit me as a partner device to take to conferences and to use for hot-desking.

Why am I even talking about this 12" notebook on UMPCPortal though? Apart from it further bluring the edges of the, once well-defined, netbook category, there are a number of other reasons. The main one for us is that it will be running XP and that means drivers! Those of us waiting for drivers for the SC3, D4, SX3, M528 and Aigo MID are going to finally have XP drivers for the chipset. One can assume that if Dell is the customer, the device will have working drivers too! The second point is one that I alluded to earlier and one that I’ve just detailed in an email report to UMPCPortal sponsors and donators. The netbook market is going to be damaging because consumers are finding that they can use a netbook in place of a normal laptop. It IS powerful enough for many. Consumers are truly finding peace with netbooks. When devices like this Dell cross over into the larger netbook market, they bring with them the low-cost pricing and that immediately damages the main notebook market. We end up with a pricing war that, in the long run, reduces funds for R&D, quality engineering and niche products. While the 12" Dell netbook device may look good for consumers now, it could cross over into the danger zone and cause real problems for the future.

Jkk has uncovered some additional information regarding the type of SSDs used in the Mini 9, and the 3G situation.

When it comes to SSDs, it seems as though the performance will depend on the capacity. Jkk (who certainly knows something about these SSDs) notes that the 16GB Mini 9 will use STEC’s (fast) SSD module, while the 4/8GB models will use a (slower) Intel SSD. The STEC SSD apparently has a read/write of 85/25, while the Intel module sits at 38/10, which is the same SSD used in the Acer Aspire One.

As for 3G, we know that there is a SIM card slot behind the battery, and room for the WWAN unit, however it looks like some of the models are lacking the WWAN module (and the PCI-E connector) until they announce carrier locked 3G units. Jkk’s recommendation: wait before ordering! Head over to jkk’s blog for more info and some good pictures.

As most of you know by now, Dell launched the Inspiron Mini 9 netbook yesterday. Jkk has come across the service manual for the unit on Dell’s site.  The manual shows some good internal pictures and there is a lot of talking in the blogosphere right now about how easy it could be to upgrade the unit’s hardware (never a bad thing).

Vicente, a UMPC Portal reader, wants to know whether the SSD in the Mini 9 has 100% high speed flash storage, or if they will pull and Eee and have a small part of the storage be high speed, but the majority of it much slower. I asked netbook guru jkk if he had any insight, and he says it isn’t clear yet. Apparently some of the review units that made their way to some of the larger tech sites don’t all have the same SSD. No one is sure exactly which will ship with the unit so it seems as though we’ll have to wait and see.

A lot of info about Dell’s entry into the netbook market has been uncovered in the last day or two. The Inspiron 910 Mini 9 has gone official a day before Gizmodo’s predicted date. Now we have all the details about the new netbook, and reviews are already up on the nets. Lets have a look, shall we?

Info directly from Dell’s site shows us three model tiers. All models share an 8.9" 1024×600 display and a 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU and the usual bevy of ports (full specs can be found in the Portal), but they differentiate in RAM, OS, webcam and SSD size. The least in terms of specs and price starts at $349 and comes equipped with 512MB of RAM, no camera, 4GB SSD, and Ubuntu, apparently with a custom Dell interface. The next model up will run you $399 and has 512MB of RAM, 0.3MP webcam, 8GB SSD, and Windows XP Home. The most costly of the three is $449 and has 1GB of RAM, 16GB SSD, 0.3MP webcam, and is also running Windows XP. Keep in mind, these are just pre-configured machines. You can mix and match the different specs (RAM/OS/webcam/SSD) and get exactly what you want. Oh and don’t forget that you can pay an extra $25 for a white model instead of a black one, if you feel so inclined. Buyer beware, none of the models come with Bluetooth, you need to add that yourself (+$20) when you customize the machine.

Strangely enough, Dell is offering ‘Instant Savings’ of $40 and $55 on the middle and top end models respectively; effectively negating any price break for taking the Ubuntu OS. Anyone care to theorize why they would want to get XP machines out the door rather than Ubuntu?

From an unknown source, but it looks good to me! A lttle high on price perhaps but that Dell brand-value will carry them through i’m sure.

Full specifications in the portal.

Update: Dell Mini 9 microsite is now live. (U.S.)

Update 2: Its all official now.

You may recall the leaked spec sheets and rumored August 22nd release date that popped up a few weeks ago. Well August is now over and Gizmodo is reporting a new release date. September 5th, this Friday. With no info on the source and the note that this release date is not "concrete", this could be just as wrong as the previously rumored date. Luckily time is on our side and one way or another, we’ll get to September 5th and find out whether this is true or not. No word yet on pricing, but let’s all hope the Inspiron 910 hits the $300 target price. 

Spotted by a reader over at Eee PC news, this looks like a report about the official specifications of the Dell E which the site is referring to as the Dell Inspiron 910. New information in the post includes 3G options at purchase time and also confirms the lack of Fn-Key row which many people in the target audience won’t miss.

As is par for the course on these info leaks, there’s no final price or availability date and in this case, no source quoted.  I’ve updated the database with the latest details. If anyone can read Portuguese and spots something that Google translator didn’t, let me know!!

I’ve just bought a new Dell desktop. Why? Because it was easy and comfortable to order it from the website. Its a brand I trust well enough and I didn’t want to spend any time researching a purchase. The same is going to happen, possibly millions of times, with this netbook.

Source odontopalm.com (Brazilian translation)
Via: Eeepcnews.de Thanks Sascha.

Engagdet got a nice little present yesterday - details on the Dell ‘E’ PC. Very interesting specs, a large standard battery and a range of SSD configurations. It hardly looks like its for ‘developing countries’ though! More the Eee PC killer methinks. There are going to be three versions of the 8.9" version, all with different SSD sizes and with the possibility of a webcam and Bluetooth. Prices will start at $299 and the launch target is, as we heard before, August.

This will certainly compete well with the HP, Acer, ASUS, MSI and ECS and if battery life and mobility is your concern, it looks like one of the better choices.

We’ve entered all the details in the product database and will be adding links and information as we get it. For a quick comparison of all 16 of the 8.9" netbooks in our database, click here.

Thanks JKK for the heads-up. Engadget have more pics and some interesting comments.

That apple-red Dell netbook you may have spotted a few weeks ago is expected to be hitting the market in August, but its keyboard will be lacking a dedicated row of F-keys. For certain users this is nearly preposterous. However for some, such as myself, it isn’t that big of a deal. I personally could live without a dedicated row of function keys. I don’t use them frequently enough to justify a whole separate row. That being said, they should still be accessible through a modifier key which at this time APCmag is saying that is not the case.

It’s true that the alpha keys are all of a good size, although others are noticeably slim, and the function keys have been dropped altogether: the Fn modifier activates hardware-related shortcuts mapped onto the keyboard, with no facility to call up the usual F1-F12 keys. [my emphasis]

It’s one thing to remove the row of keys entirely, but not providing a way to press them at all is a peculiar decision on Dell’s part. It may have something to do with the target audience. While tech enthusiasts will inevitably end up buying the Dell netbook if it turns out to be a quality product, Dell says it is targeted toward students and first time computer users. If Dell’s audience for this netbook is truly first time computer users, removal of the row of function keys makes a bit more sense. First time computer users are certainly not acquainted to keyboard shortcuts and only a small percentage would make use of them. So why not remove these keys and be able to make the rest of the keys more finger friendly? Sounds logical to me at least.

The yet to be named 9″ Dell netbook is predicted to feature Intel’s Atom, and knowing Dell, XP and Ubuntu will most likely be choices for the OS. Specs have not been announced yet but Dell says they will bring the product to market “…later this summer”, expect to specs in the next few weeks.

What is everyone’s opinion on big companies (HP , Sony, Dell) getting into the netbook explosion?

Update. New Pics and a few lines of confirmation in a Dell blog

Spotted by Gizmodo at the ‘D’ conference, Mr Dell and his mini notebook.

Very little information was given by Michael Dell to Gizmodo when they, apparently, bumped into him at the All Things Digital conference. Apparently it’s for developing countries but it looks a bit too shiny for that.

The smart money is on an 8.9″ screen, Atom and the usual set of mininote specs. Modified image below shows the screen frame and web cam. Battery design looks like a 4-cell job. I guess we’ll hear more about this very soon. All images and story from Gizmodo

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