The Dell Inspiron Mini 12 is a bit confused. It packs an Intel Atom processor, which makes it a netbook. But it also has a 12-inch screen, which exceeds our definition of what a netbook can be. On one hand it's a natural evolution of the genre in an ever growing screen size arms race, topping the 10-inchers like a razor company adding another blade. On the other, the Inspiron Mini 12 reaches a size and pricepoint that makes it comparable to far more capable systems from Dell in the same pricerange.

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The suits might fire me for this...but I'm slashing the price on this lovely Dell Mini 9 laptop to $US529. Holy crap, I just blacked out. What did I just say? Did I just say $US529? I meant to say $US1,529! Hell, I meant to say $US10,529! Well no going back now, the Dell Mini 9 laptop is here on QVC for just $US529. These are great for kids, grandparents, baseball players...wait a second...I'm receiving word that you can actually customise this same system for $US449 on Dell.com. Well...I mean...then you'd have to...go online...series of youtubes...and stuff. So, uhh, I'd recommend all QVC fans buy the Dell Mini 9 from us, then go to Dell.com and pick up a second Dell Mini 9 for only $US449. That's two laptops for under $US1000 here on QVC. Damn, still got it! [Lilliputing]

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On Halloween, our spooky Mark "The Great Pumpkiniser" Wilson discovered $US200 Eee netbooks were a distinct possibility next year. That's a great start, but there was also word this weekend that $US99 netbooks could be around the corner too. Of course there's a catch, and anyone with a mobile phone can probably guess what it is.

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A truly bizarre day to announce a new notebook, Dell's Inspiron Mini 12 is officially the most gargantuan netbook on the block. I wasn't exactly blown away by it when I scoped it briefly a couple months ago, but Laptop was sufficiently impressed in its more in-depth hands on to compare it to the MacBook Air and Voodoo Envy—but you know, 5mm thicker, more ports and you know, a thousand dollars cheaper at only $US599.

AU: The Aussie dollar strikes again - Locally we're looking at $999. And if you want to know how it really handles, David Flynn (the netbook maestro) got his hands on it for an exclusive review over at APC Mag.

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The current economic climate claimed another victim over the weekend... The Dell Mini 9's value for money. They've jacked the price up from $599 to $699 without making any changes to the specs.

Obviously Dell needs to minimise losses based on the crappy Aussie dollar in this shamozzle of a global economy, but is making their cheapest notebook more expensive by $100 the best way to do it? Unless Asus jacks up the price of the Eee (and Acer jacks up the Aspire One), Dell could have just priced themselves out of the netbook competition with this little move.

[Dell - Thanks Steve!]

Dell has just posted an update that should take care of the annoying partition error in Ubuntu Inspiron Mini 9s that would cause systems with 8GB or 16GB storage to only have 4GB of formatted disk space. Run the update manager, install the patch, restart your system and voila, you have all the space you paid for. [Direct2Dell]

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At the Los Angeles Auto Show in November, BMW will unveil a fleet of all-electric Minis. Dubbed the "Mini E," the car will run on a 150kW motor juiced by an automotive lithium-ion battery that will give it a range of 240km. The cute little golf cart real grown-up car will come in a limited run of 500, available to "select private and corporate customers" in California, New York and New Jersey.

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Bad news greeted new Dell Inspiron Mini 9 owners this week, in the form of a partition error that limited the amount of available disk space on the machine's 8GB and 16GB solid state drive. The problem limits the machines to using only 4GB of space, regardless of drive size, and only affected machines that shipped with Ubuntu Linux. According to Liliputing, the issue occurred because Dell was using the same disk image to format every machine that shipped with Ubuntu, regardless of actual disk size. Lazy! But there's options, people, so read on.

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While I admit that this Zhejiang 001's mini car looks rather wacky and utilitarian thanks to its solar top, I wouldn't mind looking like a dork if that can save me gas or electric power--if I had to have a car, that is. This one can charge using the sun electricity in 30 hours, giving it a 150km range. According to the engineer, it can only transform 14 to 17 percent of the sun light, which is the usual. But in the middle of a recession, for $US5,560 and no gas or electricity expenses, we can live with "usual" and "fugly" just fine. [Gasgoo via OhGizmo]

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We've crossed the palm-sized threshold in the contest for the tiniest USB keyboard. Joel lusts for this one, and yet, Chen does not think such a device would be useful without a mobile phone connector — Why? Mobile Phones already have text entry and clearly, and the USB keyboard's utility is all about its size. I can't wait for these to get even smaller and I will be there watching when they collide with Smartphone-sized QWERTYs. I defend these fantasy gadgets difficulty of use by the fact that you'll be able to keep a spare on your keychain one day. [Brando via BBG]

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