Dell may be jumping into the ultra portable and inexpensive laptop market soon to compete against offering such as the Asus Eee PC and Intel Classmate PC. On Dell's official blog yesterday the company released a few details on what looks like a mini Inspiron notebook. On its blog Dell only calls the notebook "the "perfect device for the next billion Internet users."
The notebook was spotted by eagle eye Brian Lam of Gizmodo who cornered Michael Dell who had one on him at the The All Things Digital conference.
The market space for these little and inexpensive computers is heating up. Yesterday Asus gave a sneak peak of its desktop Eee PC. That comes on the heels of Asus' popular Eee PC laptop. Intel launched the Classmate last year, HP has its 2133 sub-notebook, Lenovo has the Thinkpad X, Mac has the Air and now Dell has an as yet unnamed sub-notebook as well.
I suppose you can look back at the One Laptop Per Child program as the one that started it all. Originally designed for children in the developing world, the OLPC was innovative, small and rugged. An ideal computer for the developing world, but it also showed that consumers in North America were interested in an ultra small, ultra cheap laptop as well.
There isn't much information to go on for Dell's new machine, but according to Gizmodo, the laptop will have three USB ports, a card reader, VGA out and an ethernet port. No word on availability yet, but if it's priced right you can bet Dell's machine will be a hot item for 2008.
As Dell's blog states: "Stay tuned for details."
CREDIT - PC World contributor Ian Paul
