It's a mega-mini--Dell's Inspiron Mini 12

We first got a glimpse of Dell's 12-inch take on the Netbook behind closed doors a few months ago. After that, it kind of vanished from our radar screens, only to pop up Sunday, in an announcement that the system is making its debut in Japan.

It's an interesting hybrid of the ultraportable and Netbook formats, combining a 12-inch laptop chassis with the basic heart of a Netbook, namely the Intel Atom CPU. Most Netbooks have a 9- or 10-inch display, so the jump to 12 inches makes for a very different experience. Less portable, to be sure, but perhaps just big enough to win over those who say tiny Netbooks are too small and too hard to use, even for a quick trip to the coffee shop. Even with the bigger footprint, it still starts at 2.7 pounds (1.2kg) and tapers from 0.92 to 1.09 inches (23.37 to 27.69mm).
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HP Mini 1000 Netbook leaked--by HP

Had you been perusing HP's wares Sunday, you may have caught a glimpse of the company's upcoming Netbook. On HP's Home & Home Office shopping site Sunday, this image appeared:
The image, since removed from HP's Web site, noted that the HP Mini 1000 will start at US$399.99, weigh 2.25 pounds (1.02kg), and measure less than one-inch (25.4mm) thick. Given the model number and screen bezel, that's noticeably thinner than that on the 8.9-inch HP 2133 Mini-Note PC, it's a safe bet to say the Mini 1000 will feature a larger 10-inch screen.

No other details are known, so you'll have to wait a bit longer to find out whether the Mini 1000 ditches the 2133's pokey Via C7-M processor for an Intel Atom or a Via Nano CPU.

Need a strong sign that HP has a Netbook refresh in the works? On Amazon.com, the HP 2133 Mini-Note is currently selling for US$299--US$200 off its original US$499 price.

When the HP Mini 1000 is officially released, we expect to have a full review up shortly thereafter.

Via CNET Crave

Solid-state drive gets tiny

Solid-state drives aren't always faster than regular hard drives, but they sure can be tinier.

The smallest regular hard drives are the 1.8 inchers that Toshiba has been making for ultracompact laptops. On Wednesday, Super Talent Technology announced two SSDs that come in a significantly smaller form factor: .85 inch and 1 inch.

The new SSDs use Intel Z-P140 NAND Flash-based SSD technology and employ the older parallel ATA (PATA/IDE) interface, as opposed to the current and popular SATA interface used in regular-size SSDs. Both offer rather modest read and write speeds of 40 megabytes per second and 30MBps, respectively. They are also available in very small storage capacities. The .85 inchers offer 2GB and 4GB, while the 1 inchers offer 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB sizes.

Thanks to their tiny physical form and limited storage space and speed, these new drives are only suitable for ultramobile PCs and digital-multimedia broadcasting devices.

It's unclear how much these new SSDs cost. Chances are, however, that you won't be able to purchase them at all; rather, they will be available to OEM manufacturers only.

Via CNET Crave

ARM Cortex-based Netbooks due soon

Netbooks using ARM's next-generation processor architecture will be announced soon, according to a senior executive at the company.

Rob Coombs, director of mobile solutions at the U.K. processor design company, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that Cortex-A8- and Cortex-A9-based application processors would find their way not only into smartphones--as with most ARM architecture--but also into small, low-cost subnotebooks.

"In the future, we're going to be in Netbooks," Coombs said. "Expect announcements in the next few months."

Currently ubiquitous ARM-based smartphone processors are commonly based on the company's ARM11 microarchitecture. The successor to ARM11 will be Cortex-A8, and processors based on this architecture are scheduled to find their way into handsets next year.

Coombs said there are "people playing around with gigahertz speeds" using Cortex-A8 architecture.

Cortex-A9 is the multicore sister to Cortex-A8, and it is likely to go into use around 2010. Multicore processors provide power advantages, as multiple cores running at a lower speed can process more instructions per watt than can single high-speed cores.

Coombs declined to explicitly name manufacturers that might be gearing up to announce Netbooks using Cortex-based chips, instead referring to a published list of ARM's licensees. Cortex-A8 licensees include Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, PMC-Sierra, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), and Freescale Semiconductor. Those signed up to license the Cortex-A9 architecture include NEC, Nvidia, STMicroelectronics, TI, and Toshiba.
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Eee PC with dedicated graphics?

At a showcase of some of its latest products today, ASUS let us in on a little tidbit--an Eee PC Netbook with discrete graphics may be coming our way before the year is up. So far, all iterations of the Eee PC Netbooks make use of integrated Intel graphics. That's good enough for the casual gamer playing a game of Bejeweled or two, but certainly insufficient if you want to run a first-person-shooter or immersive racing game.

The ASUS spokesperson said that this is not the 10.2-inch N10 with Nvidia 9300M graphics, which has already been announced, but something in the Eee PC lineup of products. Though he could not be more specific about what other specs it will feature, we figure that the only way to differentiate a gamer-worthy Eee PC from the N10 will be the use of an SSD rather than a hard drive and perhaps a lower price.

We have mixed feelings about this. While the idea of an inexpensive Netbook capable of playing games is great, why does ASUS have to use the budget-friendly Eee PC brand for so many products? Also, why launch the N10 if something like that is in the works? We'll have to wait and see if the company really brings us this new Eee PC by the end of the year.

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