While the Mini 9 [Portal page] was pretty standard fare as far as netbooks good, the upcoming Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (which Engadget had some hands-on time with at CES) throws us a few welcomed curve-balls. Dell has finally made it official for the US and the Mini 10 will be available for purchase on February 26th.

I’m looking forward to seeing the Mini 10 and here are a few reasons why:

• True widescreen — 16:9 aspect ratio (10.1″)
• Macbook-esque botton+trackpad… trackpad — The entire trackpad clicks down and functions like the mouse button
• Custom multi-touch gesture support (via the trackpad)
• GPS + WWAN
• HDMI out port
• WiFi B/G/N

The official page from Dell also tells us of some upcoming options

•  
  • HD capabilities Enjoy your favorite movies on the optional 720p Hi-def 10.1¨ seamless display.
  • More Storage Do even more with optional 2GB memory and optional 250GB hard drive.
  • Navigation Know your way like the back of your hand using the optional GPS with optional internal WWAN support.
  • Design Studio Personalize your Mini 10 with cool designs from the artist, Tristen Eaton, in Dell’s Design Studio.
  • Long battery life No need to sacrifice weight for battery life. The Inspiron Mini 10 provides extended battery life while keeping the weight of the system under 3 pounds. 3-cell: approx. 3 hours. 6-cell: approx. 6.5 hours.
  • The New TV Watch your favorite TV shows with the internal digital TV tuner.

I’m most excited about the screen which will be able to support native 720p HD (1280×720) content with its 16:9 screen; I just hope the hardware is up to the task of playing that caliber of video!

[GottaBeMobile]

Welcome back to another edition of the WRN roundup, here is some interesting items from this week:

• Sony VAIO P – HSDPA mod — Tnkgrl of tnkgrl Mobile, has managed to unlock the VAIO P’s EVDO only 3G to allow for HSDPA as well; all it took was a $1 part and a bit of hacking.

• Dell officially launches Inspiron Mini 10 in France â€” The Inspiron Mini 10 has been officially launched in France. Still looking forward to trying one of these out for the unique buttonless trackpad and the high resolution monitor.

• Acer Aspire One AOD150 now shipping in the US — Acer’s second generation netbook is now on sale in the US and for only $350! We liked the first one and are hoping that this one will live surpass the quality of the first.

• SSD Test: RunCore Mini PCI-e SATA SSD for Asus Eee PCs — Jkk does a video test of RunCore SSDs for Eee PCs and sees some pretty impressive speeds. Remember though, these aren’t blindingly fast and super-expensive, but rather have a good price:speed ratio.

• HP Mini 1000 accessories — Brad from Liliputing points us to an HP Mini 1000 [Portal page] site with accessories available for the Mini 1000. A few things are available to order today but the VGA adapter and Mobile Mini Drive still aren’t available yet. Check out our Mini 1000 MIE coverage here.

• Sony Vaio P battery life: Standard vs. Extended — Jenn of Pocketables.net continues here thorough coverage of the VAIO P with tests of the 2- and 4-cell batteries. Click through for a full chart featuring the length that the batteries lasted while running different tasks. While the 2-cell battery probably won’t satisfy your daily computing needs, the 4-cell managed to last just over 6 hours browsing the web (with one hour of that taken up by playing a flash video).

Welcome to this weeks edition of the Weekly Netbook Roundup. Lets see the interesting things that have gone on in the netbook space since we last spoke.

• Special edition Samsung NC10 with larger battery available for preorder — Looks like Amazon is selling a special version of the NC10 with a larger trackpad and battery (5900mAh 6-cell) which Samsung says will last for 9.4 hours. The screen on this version will be glossy unlike the original matte version. You can pick one up for $499.

• Sony Vaio P (VGN-P588E) performance and benchmarks — Jenn from Pocketables.net takes the VAIO P for a spin and shows us lots of good stats on how the computer performs. Some people don’t think the VAIO P is a netbook, but for some reason we included it here in the WNR. Controversy!

• Hands on with the Acer Aspire One D150 – Video — Sascha from netbooknews.de has a good hands on video of the Acer Aspire One D150. He doesn’t seem to be thrilled with the keyboard and says he is disappointed at the quality of the Aspire One D150 considering how successful the original Aspire One was, and that this is a second-gen netbook.

• Dell’s Mini 9 selling for just $249 — who needs a subsidy? — Looks like Dell has cut the price on its Inspiron Mini 9 [Portal page] netbook. You can pick up the lowest-speced Mini 9 which has 512MB of RAM, Ubuntu, and a 4GB SSD. Add $50 and you’ll get another 4GB of storage and Windows XP.

• Netbook growth leads to surge in Windows XP sales — Despite many netbook makers offering Linux flavors of their netbooks, XP is hugely popular, effecting OS sales charts on all PC sales, not just netbooks. “In December, 13.7% of all laptops sold, and 11.2% of all computers were running Windows XP.”.

• More rumored Dell Mini 10 details, colors surface — More information on Dells upcoming Mini 10 netbook. Apparently some leaked information (which isn’t confirmed to be true yet) has indicated that the Mini 10 will be available with two different display options, 1024 x 576 and 1366 x 768. Also contained in the leak is the option of 1.3GHz or 1.6GHz CPU, 3 or 6-cell battery, and something referred to as a “DVD slice” which sounds… interesting.

That’s all for this week. Tune in next time to the Weekly Netbook Roundup next monday!

At CES 09, Engadget managed to get some hands on time with the recently announced Dell Inspiron Mini 10, which I am looking forward to. I see now that the mouse buttons are built into the trackpad which adds another unique item to this netbook’s list of features. Engadget had this to say about the Mini 10:

“…much nicer looking than the Mini 9, and more compact than the Mini 12. No wonder Dell’s calling it a “perfect 10.” The multitouch trackpad is really similar to the one on the newest Macbooks, but it’s a little less intuitive”

Have a look at some of the shots here, and head over to Engadget for even more.

What do you do when the Dell Mini 9 [Product page] and Mini 12 just aren’t enough? Well the only logical thing to do is come out with the Mini 10. The Dell Mini 10, shown at CES, has (obviously enough) a 10″ screen. Something that immediately piques my interested is that the Mini 10 apparently won’t run the obligatory 1024×600 resolution, but instead use a properly formatted 16:9 aspect ratio screen with a 720p resolution (1280×720). Some other nice features include:

• Z530 Atom CPU (less typical than most netbooks)
• 802.11N WiFi
• Integrated GPS
• Integrated 3G
• TV-tuner
• A trackpad with what Dell is calling “exclusive gestures”

I have to say that this is shaping up to be a nice 10″ netbook. We’ll see how the pricing turns out, which at this point is not announced by Dell, nor a release date.

[Engadget]

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]