oh nom nom nom nom, i can hear the cannibalization of dell's light weight w ULV procs and expensive as hell laptops.

Dell schmell. Buy HP business-class products. They're better by a long shot.

I figured for a 12" device you would want notebook feats, not netbook.
10" is a great size, but I (as well as many others) prefer the much more portable 9" devices like the EeePc900 series.
The keyboard is good enough for the basics (like the rest of the internals), the price is cheaper than the 10".
The 10"may have a slightly better keyboard, but at the expense of a larger, heavier laptop.
Also 10" screens need more backlight to get the same amount of knits, so the battery will most likely last less.

Wow, funny how things turn around. I remember when Dell "featured" the 800Mhz Pentium III chip, man that was like the best thing since sliced bread. Dell "pwned" the competition. Their towers even looked bad ass back then. Why is everyone hatin' on Dell now? Are they really THAT bad?

yes^^
they suck

OK, seriously. If your so sure about this you would have at least THREE GOOD REASONS.. no? Please entertain me. )

I think dell is pretty good in many ways. maybe better than hp in several ways. These are my three ways for being better than HP. I'll list hp's good ways too.
* Great Customer Service (it means they're friendly, useful)
* Customizable
* Outstanding warranty, RMA
I can't list any bad things about dell. They serve me well

HP
* Good lookin' products (its sleek look)
* Somewhat mostly cheaper than Dell (in similar configurations)

and hp's bad ways
* Horrible, horrible customer service (I think most of you know what I mean)

the thing that pooped me about dell the last time was them pushing vista basic as default OS on BUSINESS line products... insanity!

Pesonally I think all retail PC vendors are not very good. To get what you really want you should build it yourself. That being said, netbooks and notebooks are the exception and we are stuck with dealing with retail. Dell used to advertise that they listened to the people and would offer you the option of either Windows XP or Vista 32 bit or 64bit on your laptop. Now your only option for the most part is Vista 64bit and their customer support is the pits.

I don't know what you all are talking about. Dell is the current best bang for your buck labtop wise. They are a lot better than the lenovo garbage.

To be honest, I always found a 12-13 inch screen the perfect size for a any laptop. I personally own a Vostro 1220 and I love it. But since they are talking about netbooks, I guess 10 inches is the prime number. I think a netbook should be classified as a netbook because they all have Atom Processors, not by screen size.

The key with Dell is to only buy from the Small Business side. The support is WAY better. American support call centers and they have been solid on honoring warranties and making repairs. Also, the small business side stuff comes bloatware free. My Vostro and Precision Mobile Workstation came with a nice clean install with only the core extras such as DVD burning software. The Inspirons my friends have are always full of bloatware like the other companies and the standard tech support from India follows. No thanks. As for desktops, building yourself is better, so I just go with that.

If u ever use a dell for more than what it is supposed to be used for then they suck. Even the XPSs they aren't all that great, they may be good gaming laptops but they won't last long, however, with HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, and occassionally Sony VAIO, they can be used for more complicated things and they will still stay stable. The big difference between Dell and other good makers is that the latter has better manufacturing and parts.

I hope the "netbook" dies out soon. No offense to Dell, they're seriously not that usefull w/ a 10" screen and slow CPU.

Yeah... 10" netbooks are soooo bad... so much that they take up a sizable area in retail outlets and created their own category.

In a world were people spend a lot of time TEXTing & browsing on 2" screen cellphones - a 10" netbook is HUGE!

Netbooks are selling very because they are very small and cheap. For years, SONY has made a tiny notebook with a 6~7" screen for $2000+. Didn't sell very well.

These things are slicker, functional, portable and don't weigh much... about 2~3lbs. I can fit 4 netbooks into the area of my 15" Thinkpad.

For what I need in a portable computer, a netbook would have done just about as good... sure a little slower. But a heck of a lot smaller.

For $300, they are a good value. Sure there are $350~500 notebooks out there that have optical drives, bigger screens and easily more powerful CPUs... but a netbook makes about the same or a bit more profit and they SELL.

Netbooks are NOT desktop or notebook replacements... they are a 2nd /3rd computer.

A friend went from a single huge 17" HP computer to a much faster and cheaper Desktop with a 26" display. For portable use, a $300 netbook... 3lbs vs 10lbs becomes more USABLE out in the field than a 17" giant.

i don't see why he went from HP to Dell, must have low on money

I've brought two mini 12s and have to say they are top little machines for a spot of web surfing and doing the accounts at home - 1280x800 on a 12 inch screen is so much more useful than 1024x576, seems bizarre to me that they'd cancel the line unless it's eating into sales of the pricer laptops. Victim of it's own success possibly.