Dell Inspiron 11z Launches Comments

How does this processor stack up to say atom N270

11.6" is a minimum size and Dell have realised this. This convenience market is segmenting into Large smartphones by Nokia etc and small, cheap, powerful, and above all, light laptops.

A laptop has to be big enough a)to sit on your lap and b) have a readable screen ie really 12" and c) run for a long time and stay cool d) have backlit chiclet keys e) be cheap f) have a proper processor and a minimum of 2 GB ram.

Cheap is less than 200 GBP.

I remember my joy when I got hold of the first CBM calculator for less than $5. It ran my business for years.

That is the kind of breakthrough we are waiting for. The industry just doesn't seem to realise that no one wants a heavy hot expensive laptop any more. Just as no one wanted a hot, noisy desktop any more and moved to laptops.

But this Dell has started thr change.

If they had Windows 7 upgrade on this and a it cost about £250 I'd order it right now. The problem is that netbooks are priced at £300 or a little over, that's way too much.

"There's no internal optical drive but Dell will happily add one, for a price."

Just to clarify, will you be able to add an internal optical drive, or will Dell simply be able to supply you with an external USB optical drive? If it's the former, that's a (surprisingly!) unique feature in a recent machine with less than a say 14" screen in.

If not, meh. Do you reckon we'll see faster versions that go beyond trying to match Atom and that instead attempt to surpass it?

The 11z will be available in the UK on August 25th from the Carphone Warehouse - price is not yet available:

http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/news/coming-soon/dell-inspiron-11

- Simon.