October 28, 2008 With Netbooks continuing to prove popular Dell has released a big brother for its Inspiron Mini 9. Perhaps aiming for the customer that thinks a 9 or 10-inch display is too small, but a full size laptop is overkill for their needs, the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 features a bigger-than-your-average-Netbook 12.1-inch WXGA display, and runs on Netbook standard Intel Atom CPU. The hard drives are of the traditional platter variety in 60GB or 80GB sizes instead of the SSD drives found in the Mini 9 and the Mini 12 comes with 1GB of RAM, a built-in webcam and Windows Vista Home Basic – although XP and Ubuntu variants are due by year’s end.

The unit has a starting weight of 2.72 lbs and tapers from 0.92 to 1.09-inches. If you like your Netbooks with a little bit of meat on their bones the Mini 12 could be worth checking out.

The Dell Inspiron Mini 12 is available initially only in Japan but will launch online globally by late November with configurations starting under US$600.