World First Review of Dell's 12.1in Netbook

An anonymous reader points to what's claimed to be "the world's first look at Dell's 12.1" netbook," running at Australian Personal Computer Magazine. There's a bit of gushing at the beginning, but this is followed by some informative pictures, informal battery-life tests, and interesting background about the machine's components. Upshot: it's a well-made, decent-performing small laptop with a better keyboard than smaller netbooks and more wireless options than most. However, it's shorter on battery life (bigger screen, smaller battery) than Dell's smaller Mini 9, and less easily upgraded.

pricey

[Entropy98]

At $1000 I'm not sure who this is targeted at.
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Re:pricey

[speeDDemon (nw)]

Whilst I understand its a limitation of the chipset, 1Gb of RAM and Vista.... ewww. Internal 3G card is a nice touch though.

This is going the wrong way

[Anonymous Coward]

This almost seems like it is a full blown laptop again. The EEE had me hopefull we would see really affordable laptops. But then it was a big hit. Prices went up specs went up. What do we have now. Normal laptops only they are called mini.

Not the first review!

[Anonymous Coward]

This review, from 2007, is of a Dell XPS M1210 laptop (12.1 in screen), which I've owned for over a year.

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/29878/review/xps_m1210.html [pcworld.com]

Re:pricey

[cayenne8]

" The chipset can only run Vista? Egads! What unholy portent is this? I cast thee OUT!

*throws netbook into the dark Abyss of Tortured Souls and Recycled Cardboard*

LOL...that's pretty good.

But it made me think...who is going to be buying any of these things? I know I'm a bit behind trends here of late, but, I'd not heard the term 'netbook' till a couple weeks or so ago. Why are they coming out with laptops with such small screens, and underpowered CPU-wise? It seems they are going backwards in terms of performance and viewing capability?

I'll grant you that these are nice and thin and lighter, but, seriously, it looks like we're regressing back to the days of early laptops that were light on processing power, and screens so small you needed a magnifying glass to use them.

Re:pricey

[dugjohnson]

Real NETBOOKS (not this thing, too big and expensive) are useful for RIAs (Rich Internet Apps) that don't need a lot of screen real estate.  IF they have a lot of battery and IF they are small enough and IF they are cheap enough, you can put these netbooks into the hands of floor workers (retail, medical office) and have all of the access you need.  Most WIFI phones/PDAs are too small for real floor usage.

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