Dell's low-priced Inspiron Mini 9, which has just recently been released officially, is making all the headlines again. Now, this doesn’t happen because it has suddenly become more successful than any other netbook on the market, but rather because recent reports indicate it is about to receive a “more-evolved” counterpart. Apparently, the Round Rock, Texas-based company is planning to release a 12.1-inch Inspiron, which looks pretty much the same as the just-launched Mini 9.

 

The new model has been listed on retailer Tesco's website, which also mentions that the Inspiron Z530 will only be available after October 6. Furthermore, all similarities in design aside, the 12.1-inch Z530 is very different from Dell's Inspiron Mini 9, especially if you take the time to give the listed specifications a thorough look.

 

First of all, the new 12.1-inch Inspiron is going to be powered by an Intel Atom Z530 which will run at a core speed of 1.33GHz. This will be the first portable system we heard of that doesn't run on a Intel Atom N270 processor, so we should soon see more diversity in configuration for all the other netbooks on the market. In addition, the netbook's 12.1-inch WXGA display is powered by an Intel integrated graphics, although there are no direct specifications regarding the graphics core model.

 

Aside from that, the Dell Inspiron Z530, which comes with a listed price of £299.00, is equipped with a 3-in-1 media card reader, 40GB of storage (on a 4200RPM hard drive), 1GB of 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 802.11b/g wireless connectivity and a Linux Ubuntu operating system. You will also get 3 USB 2.0 ports, RJ 45 for wired Ethernet connection and a VGA output. All of these will be packed in a netbook that weighs 1.2kg, according to the tech specs provided by Tesco.

 

While we really don't know what to make of the listed Inspiron seeing how there’s no official word on it yet, we might as well mention that it will be nice to see a different configuration for a netbook from that of most of the other products available on the market.

 

In related news, it appears that the first customers to have ordered their own Inspiron Mini 9 have already got the chance to boot one of these systems for the first time. This means that Round Rock-based Dell has already began shipping them to their now rightful owners.