Dell Inspiron Mini 12

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With the evolution of the netbook now progressing at such a rate that it would probably make Darwin mutter darkly about wishing the Bible was right, hardly a month, week, day passes without a new sub-species crawling from the primordial ooze.

One of the latest is the Dell Inspiron Mini 12, which - as the more alert of you will suspect - is a 12in screen version of the Inspiron Mini 9. Well, almost - the differences actually run a little deeper than that.

Mainly its a question of storage. While the Mini 9 only came with SSD storage, in either 4, 8 or 16GB flavours, the Mini 12 only comes with an HDD, either 40GB or 80GB, respectively included on the Linux - Ubuntu 8.04 - and Windows XP varieties of the netbook.

Exactly why Dell won't let you have a Mini 12 with an SSD – or a Mini 9 with an HDD, for that matter - is anyone's guess.

The Mini 12 is a fair bit bigger than its 9in sibling, but at 299mm x 229mm, its footprint isn't that much larger. And, more to the point, the Mini 12 is actually the thinner of the two, rising from 23.3mm at the front to 27.6mm at the rear, compared the 9's 27.2-31.7mm. Its only 201g heaver than the Mini 9 too, at 1.2 vs 1kg.

Raw numbers aside, the Mini 12 is an eminently portable device and while it may not slide into an envelope, it's every bit as easy to cart about as Apple's MacBook Air.

Its larger-than-the-netbook-norm footprint notwithstanding, the Mini 12 is otherwise Small Cheap Computer standard. On the left hand side, you get two USB ports, a VGA video connector, Kensington lock and power jack, while on the right you get another USB port, 3.5mm audio jacks, a three-in-one card reader and a 10/100Mb/s Ethernet port. Embedded above the screen is a 1.3Mp webcam and microphone.

Now you can say what you like about Dell, but it does know how to bolt a laptop together and, like the Mini 9, we struggle to find a bad word to say about the Mini 12's build quality. It's solid, doesn't creak or groan when you try to bend it - or the screen - and the hinge is nicely weighted.

That not say it's perfect. Our review sample came with the standard black colour option which makes the Mini 12in a fingerprint magnet of unusual quality, so we'd seriously suggest going for the "Arctic White" version.

Secondly, the 'Power On' light is a cheap looking and overly bright pure white affair that's slightly distracting when using the Mini 12 in good light and just plain annoying when using it in low light or of an evening.

The Mini 12 also lacks anything in the way of an external Wi-Fi switch. Nor does it have the status LEDs you will find on the front lip of the Mini 9 so you can't tell when it is fully charged if it's switched off.

The styling is also just a bit, well, conservative for our tastes. It looks OK on its own, but whenever we sat it down next to our white Acer Aspire One it was hard not to come to the conclusion that Dell's designers really couldn't be bothered to make the Mini 12 – or the 9 or the new 10, for that matter – stand out from the crowd.

And a nice screen it is too - assuming, like us, you're happy with the glossy finish – being bright, crisp and clear. At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, web browsing, word processing and just about any other PC-based function you care to mention really are a fair bit more enjoyable on a 12-incher than they are when you only have ten or nine inches to amuse yourself with.

The Mini 12 comes with a three-cell 24Whr battery like dell 5081P battery, Dell 1K500 battery, Dell Inspiron 3700 battery, Dell Precision M40 battery, Dell Precision M50 battery, dell Inspiron 700m battery, dell Inspiron 710m battery, dell F5136 battery, dell 312-0306 battery, dell 312-0305 battery rather than the four-cell 32Whr pack fitted to the Mini 9 - though a six-cell 48Whr unit is also available for an extra £40.

The basic battery pack managed to play a standard-definition video at full screen - and full brightness and with the Wi-Fi radio switched on – for 139 minutes which, when compared to the 173 minutes the Mini 9 managed, suggests that Dell would have been better served by using the same four-cell power pack in the 12 that it uses in the 9, the slight increase in weight notwithstanding.