It looks like Dell just couldn't wait to give the world the full run-down on the Inspiron Duo. The company has officially revealed (courtesy of Engadget and the Windows Blog) that its novel netvertible will be arriving on store shelves in the first week of December for $549 or £449.
Though the price is quite high compared to most netbooks, you're certainly getting plenty for your money. Under the bonnet is a dual-core Intel Atom N550 and 2GB DDR3 with a Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator chip taking care of HD and - more importantly for most people - Flash video decoding.
The display measures a netbook-standard 10in, but there's nothing standard about the 1,366x768px capacitive-multitouch screen. The system will be running Windows 7 Home Premium, but Dell has wisely included a touch-friendly layer that automatically pops up when the screen is flipped around. The Stage UI will provide quick access to various media functions and should make getting the most out of the tablet-mode a bit easier.
Of course, the two most important questions surrounding the Duo are how well the tablet features work and how much it costs. We can't comment on the former, but we now know that the system will cost £449 for the configuration described when it becomes available to pre-order sometime in the next week.
This isn't a huge premium over other dual-core netbooks, although it does get dangerously close to the price of more-powerful entry-level laptops. Importantly, though - at least in the minds of many consumers - it'll be priced in the same sort of region as the base iPad, and can offer a lot more power and flexibility.
Now that we know what it'll cost, could you be tempted to buy Dell's latest netbook, or is the price too high for anything powered by an Atom CPU? Let us know in the HEXUS.community.
