David Flynn05 June 2008, 2:49 PM
Due by August, Dell’s 9 inch ‘Eee PC killer’ seeks to cut through the increasingly crowded mini-note market. Here's the latest on Dell’s littlest laptop.
Page 2 - Processor and operating system
However, given Dell’s relationships with Intel and Microsoft, it’s almost a certainty that an Atom processor sits under the hood and Windows XP will be parked on the hard drive. Ubuntu may also appear on the OS checklist, based on Dell’s desire to drive this as a first-time PC into emerging markets and its current support for Ubuntu as the Linux distro of choice for desktops and notebooks. But beyond that, all speculation of RAM, disk space and battery capacity remain educated guesses at best.
What we do know is that this Lilliputian laptop is due by August. “We’ll be launching later this summer” confirmed Alex Gruzen, senior vice president for Dell’s Consumer Product Group. Unless Dell pulls off a July release, Dell will find itself at arriving at the tail end of the current crowded mini-note pack.
“The reason we were later to the market is we’ve been working on getting the right keyboard” explains Gruzen, who says the optimised keyboard is “unique to Dell”. “The keypad design accommodates as best as possible the best user experience for this class of products.”
It’s true that the alpha keys are all of a good size, although others are noticeably slim, and the function keys have been dropped altogether: the Fn modifier activates hardware-related shortcuts mapped onto the keyboard, with no facility to call up the usual F1-F12 keys. “This was a trade off so the rest of the keys could be bigger”, Gruzen says.
The model we saw has several subtle differences from the unit which Michael Dell was seen carrying it around during last week’s D6 conference. The labelling on the keyboard was more subdued, which we preferred, although the shortcuts activated by the ‘fn’ key were littered around the keyboard rather than being logically arranged along the top row of numeric keys as they were on Michael Dell’s own machine.
These shortcuts included dropping the unit into standby mode, adjusting volume and screen brightness, media playback, turning wireless on and off, toggling between the mini-note’s screen and an external screen (which connects to the device’s VGA output port) and calling up a display of remaining battery life.