APC recently got to spend a bit of time at Dell’s headquarters and managed to get some new details on the upcoming Dell low-cost notebook. The article looks at some design decisions Dell made to keep the notebook small.
While there is still no information on specifications, Dell has confirmed that its entry into this market will not come with a function key row. This allows Dell to offer a larger keyboard without affecting overall size. The functions will still be available but will be activated using custom key combinations. It sounds like they are all over the keyboard though rather than in a neatly organized row. Another detail noticed by APC is that the pre-production model they saw featured more subtle keyboard labels than had been spotted on the unit carried by Michael Dell at D6.
The unit also comes with three USB ports, VGA output, a memory card reader and will likely have some status LEDs (the pre-production unit only had a sticker where these could go). Like the MSI Wind and HP 2133 Mini-Note, the notebook is wedge-shaped.
APC goes on to conjecture that Dell will likely use an Intel processor and offer a choice of Windows XP or Ubuntu (Linux). Multiple colours are also expected. Dell is also looking at adding this notebook to its Inspiron family.
Dell expects that its entry will be released in August. If so, we should be able to find out more information about it fairly soon!