Dell, HP go head to head with 10 in net/notebooks

Stephen Withers
Friday, 20 February 2009 09:54

IT Industry - Market

Two of the world's leading PC vendors have announced 10 in mini notebooks with similar specifications in the same week.

There's little doubt that netbooks and small form factor notebooks (we'll leave it to others to argue over the difference, if any) are a relatively bright spot in a slowing PC market.

ASUS might have pioneered the market, but mainstream vendors are muscling in, as evidenced by this week's announcements by HP and Dell.

The pricing and specs are broadly similar.

Both the HP Mini 2140 and the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 are priced from $A799.

And both use Atom CPUs, though HP has picked the N270 1.60GHz version while Dell gives a choice of the 1.33GHz Z520 or the 1.60GHz Z530.

Both come with 1G of RAM as standard, with the option of 2G from HP. (Dell's spec sheet gives no indication that memory expansion is possible.)

And when it comes to storage, HP provides a slightly wider selection with 160G 5400 or 7200 rpm hard disks or a 80G solid state drive. Dell offers either a 120G or 160G 5400 rpm drive.

Both include Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (g or a/g/n from Dell, b/g or a/b/g/n from HP) and a webcam.

So what are the main differences? See page 2.