More on the Dell Inspiron Mini 10

The official press release for the new Dell Inspiron Mini 10 hit the wires this morning – following up the Direct2Dell blog posting yesterday. As mentioned earlier this morning, the Mini 10 is available now for pre-order over at QVC and will be available for purchase directly from Dell in the U.S. and other countries starting on Feb. 26th.

I was initially thrown off as to why Dell would make the Mini 10 available for pre-order first on QVC but after a little bit of sleep, it all makes sense. Netbooks as a market segment have been a hit with women, teens, and kids, and QVC is the perfect outlet for Dell to attract these kinds of sales.

As a reminder, here’s what you need to know about the Inspiron Mini 10’s feature set:

Starting weight of 2.86 lbs
Intel Atom Z520 at 1.33 GHz or Intel Atom Z530 at 1.6 GHz
Intel Poulsbo US15Wgraphics chipset
Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 500
92 percent keyboard size
Multi-touch gestures touchpad – navigate the screen using simple movements to rotate, scroll, and zoom
10.1 inch WSVGA edge to edge 16:9 aspect ratio display (1024×576)
HDMI output
Wi-Fi connectivity
Built-in webcam
Windows XP OS
1GB RAM standard
160GB HDD
Stereo speakers
3 cell 24WHr Li-Ion battery
Available in Obsidian Black, Alpine White, Cherry Red, Promise Pink, Ice Blue and Jade Green.
Dell online storage options – free plan comes with 2GB of space to paid plans with up to 100GB of space
Measures 10.28 x 7.19 x 1.12~1.25 inches

Optional features and accessories coming to the Mini 10 include:

Internal digital TV tuner
External USB DVD player
Ubuntu and Windows Vista options
Bluetooth
WWAN support
Internal GPS
2GB RAM
250GB HDD
Solid State Drives
Design Studio images

Let’s be clear – the Mini 10 is certainly not the cheapest 10 inch netbook out on the market.. yet it holds some interesting potential. Given the number of planned enhancements to the Mini 10, this could be the platform to watch over time. Yet knowing there are several planned enhancements and accessories, it’s hard to recommend someone to go out and pre-order this system right now. If I had my way, I’d hold out for the larger resolution panel (which will be 1366 x 768) and the larger 2GB of memory – especially when Windows 7 is ready for prime-time.

In the meantime, you can read a hands-on look at the Inspiron Mini 10 over at PC Magazine. Here’s a snippet from the article:

“At launch, the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 isn’t the cheapest netbook on the block, as it will be priced at $549 — and this is the standard configuration. With future add-ons, tricking out this netbook might make the Asus eeePC 1000HE and the Acer Aspire One (10-inch) look like charity handouts. But this is Dell, company known for its infamous coupons and aggressive deals. The amount of technology that they could potentially pack into this netbook will make others take notice—and respond. Look for companies like ASUS and HP to intensify the netbook wars upon news of Dell’s latest netbook darling.”