Dell makes tiny assault on New Zealand with $799 ultramobile laptop

Dell’s entry into the fast-growing ultramobile laptop market is set to hit New Zealand. From this Wednesday, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 will ship for $NZ799 with an 8.9-inch (1024x600) screen, 1.6GHz version of Intel’s new Atom processor, 1GB of memory, 11.g and Bluetooth wireless, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and a 4GB solid state hard drive.

Locally, the Mini 9 will ship with Windows XP rather than Windows Vista, now Microsoft’s only OS option for nearly all PCs. US customers are also offered a version of the Mini 9 – priced from $US349 – running on Ubuntu Linux.

The 1.03kg, 23cm wide, 17cm deep Mini 9 will enter the competitive new ultramobile notebook space, so far dominated by Asus’ EEE PC ($749 in a Windows version with a 9-inch screen; $599 in a Windows version with a 7-inch screen).

Step-up models in the Mini 9 line-up feature 8GB and 12GB solid state hard drives (a solid state hard drive eschews the spinning magnetic platters of a traditional hard drive in favour of the same Flash memory used in peripherals like digital cameras. Solid state drives are quieter, more energy efficient and faster at loading and running Windows and other software, but give much less storage real estate).