Dell mini-note arrives in August

“I’m not going to talk about about the specification of the product” insisted Dell senior vice president Jeff Clarke during a briefing on the company’s directions in the notebook market. We suggested to Clarke that he wasn’t much fun; he smiled and said he gets that a lot, “especially from the press”.

However, given Dell’s relationships with Intel and Microsoft, it’s almost a certainty that an Atom processor sits under the hood and Windows XP will be parked on the hard drive. Ubuntu may also appear on the OS checklist, based on Dell’s desire to drive this as a first-time PC into emerging markets and its current support for Ubuntu as the Linux distro of choice for desktops and notebooks. But beyond that, all speculation of RAM, disk space and battery capacity remain educated guesses at best.

What we do know is that this Lilliputian laptop is due by August. “We’ll be launching later this summer” confirmed Alex Gruzen, senior vice president for Dell’s Consumer Product Group. Unless Dell pulls off a July release, Dell will find itself at arriving at the tail end of the current crowded mini-note pack.