Dell Gets Colourful With Inspiron Mini

Dell is announcing colorful new Inspiron netbook, laptop and desktop updates.
The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook, released just this February, to compete against the likes of Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Asus, has been updated in the form of the Inspiron Mini 10v.

With a starting price of $299, the Mini 10v features a larger keyboard—one that’s 92 percent of the size of a standard keyboard—a choice between Ubuntu or Microsoft XP operating systems, a built-in Web cam, 1 GB of RAM, multiple connectivity options and optional Bluetooth.

Customers can also choose between 120- and 160-GB hard drives and a 16GB solid state drive (with both the XP and Ubuntu operating systems) or an 8GB solid state drive with the Ubuntu OS.

And then there are the colours, seven options in all: Obsidian Black, Alpine White, Cherry Red, Promise Pink (in the United States only—sorry, Canada and Latin America), Ice Blue, Jade Green and Passion Purple.

(Ostensibly, a focus group somewhere named colour as a major means of personalisation. Lenovo’s newest netbook, an update called the S10-2 IdeaPad, also comes in a handful of colours, and HP recently also strayed from black for the first time, offering its 4410 and 4415 business notebooks in a choice of Noir or Merlot.)

Dell’s Inspiron 15 laptop, which begins in the US at $399 (£260), features a high-definition 16:9 display, a choice of hard drive sizes, an optional DVD burner and an optional 7-in-1 media card reader.

And, again, the colours, this time minus the green and purple but plus an additional blue. They officially go by: Jet Black, Alpine White, Ice Blue, Pacific Blue, Cherry Red and Promise Pink (again, only in the United States).

Lastly, Dell is introducing Inspiron slim and mini-tower desktops, the Inspiron 537 and 537 in the United States and Canada, and the Inspiron 545 for Latin America.

Starting at $299 (£195), the colours this time are Piano Black, Pure White, Plum Purple, True Blue, Formula Red, Tangerine Orange, Sprig Green and the elusive, U.S.-only Promise Pink.