PC Mag’s hands-on with the Inspiron 11z
PC Magazine is already out with their initial hands-on treatment of the newly announced Dell Inspiron 11z netbook err.. notebook. It appears there’s certainly some things to like with the 11z. You get a larger 11.6 inch display (although Dell did have a 12 inch netbook mindyou) with a nice 1366 x 768 resolution. You get a thin notebook – one that’s roughly on par with the Mini 10v apparently. There’s even HDMI out for those of you interested in putting the display on a larger display. Is the Celeron 723 an advantage? It’s hard to say exactly. It is an ultra low voltage processor so it has that much going for it. However, the TDP is 10W while the TDP of the Atom N270 is a mere 2.5W so expect battery life to suffer a bit more (more on that in a bit). However, on the positive, the Celeron 723 is a 64 bit processor so you at least have the option of installing a 64 bit OS.
However, one thing strikes me as rather odd – the decision by Dell to stick to a 92 percent keyboard. Granted, Dell might be reusing an existing design from previous systems but come on.. with companies such as Toshiba figuring out ways to jam a full sized keyboard into a 10 inch form factor, the least Dell could have done was increase the keyboard form factor on the 11z.
Another beef – the 3 cell battery. PC Mag states that Dell will be releasing a 6 cell battery later on but geez – couldn’t Dell with all its might get someone to manufacture a 6 cell battery now? With a 3 cell battery, the 11z probably won’t get much more than 2-3 hours of power.
If anything, the Inspiron 11z seems designed to combat the recent Gateway LT3103u netbook which runs a single core Athlon 64 processor. Both systems have similar makeups although the LT3103u has a better keyboard and is arguably the better bang for the buck right now given the larger capacity battery and the lower price of $379.
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