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Saturday August 8, 2009
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 Dell has decided that 12-inch netbooks are too... well, too something, and has decided to retire the Dell Mini 12, Dell said in a blog post on Saturday. Good news, however, as the Mini 9 is back, after Dell originally retired it in early June.
"So, should you read anything into this as far as Dell's commitment to
the netbook space?" Dell blogger Lionel Menchaca wrote in a blog post. "Nope. It really boils down to this: for a lot of
customers, 10-inch displays are the sweet spot for netbooks."
Dell is offering the Mini 9 for $299, and the Dell Mini 12 is still being offered at Dell's factory outlet for what appears to be $569 or less.
So, we can draw one interesting conclusion from all this: at Dell, at least, the netbook stops and the notebook starts at 12-inch screens.
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August 8, 2009 3:09 PM
I have been a big fan of Dell for years. I own an Inspiron 600m that I have thoroughly enjoyed for 5+ years. It has a 14.1" screen. I recently purchased a netbook and am enjoying it as well. I never have understood the purpose of buying a notebook with a humongous screen. Kind of defeats the purpose of portability. I'm sure Dell is going to have success with this product.
August 8, 2009 10:35 PM
I just bought a mini-10v today. Everything is great except the 1GB memory. It takes forever for pages to load (or maybe there's a problem with mine). I tried an Acer Aspire, and it seems to outperform the Mini-10v. I'll probably buy a 2gig stick of memory and a 64GB solid state hard drive and see if it becomes more acceptable. I didn't expect blazing speeds comparable to my desktop and desktop replacements, but with Dell's reputation, I thought surfing the net and reading e-mail would be faster than with the Acer Aspire One.
August 10, 2009 4:59 PM
I read recently somewhere that Microsoft had decided, in its infinite wisdom, that a 'netbook' couldn't have more than a 10" screen. It's also my understanding that manufacturers pay a much lower MS royalty to put Windows on netbooks than on notebooks or laptops. So regardless of how Dell attempts to justify its decision, I have to think that this cost differential had a lot to do with its decision to discontinue screen sizes larger than 10".