Dell E and E Slim revealed, taking on Eee and Air in one fell swoop
There’s a whole range to compete with the Asus EeePC and similar laptops from HP, Acer, etc. and then a higher-end 12.1 inch model that’s 0.8" thick with 2GB RAM and 60GB Drive. All available with Linux pre-installed but no details on which Linux. The alternative OS is XP Home (No Vista). All models appear to also come with an instant-on Linux feature similar to Splashtop. Supposed to start appearing in August.
Interesting… I bought one of the first round of Dell laptops with Ubuntu (the 1420). I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually started using the Ubuntu netbook remix, if only because they can sell support through Canonical. In any case, a small 8.9 inch laptop for $299 sounds pretty interesting, and if I could scrape the money together for it, would be kind of cool to have just so I wouldn’t have to lug the larger one around if I’m walking or biking around the city. I bought the laptop with Ubuntu installed because I was getting tired of scouring product descriptions to find out which hardware was included and if it was supported in Linux, and also to signal that there are people who would buy such a thing. But after a few weeks of Ubuntu I was quite annoyed and replaced it with openSUSE (quite easily and without fuss, I might add).