Nov 19, 2010 07:48 GMT  ·  By

After a long series of teasers and rumors, the Dell tablet/netbook hybrid, the Inspiron Duo, has been finally made official, Dall saying this crazy contraption should become available for pre-order soon and start shipping in the first week of December, just in time for the Holidays.

Together with the infos regarding availability, Dell has also shed more light on the Duo's hardware configuration, that 1.5GHz dual-core Intel Atom N550 processor that we previously reported on, being paired with 2GB of DDR3 memory as well as a 250GB hard drive.

Of course that if you need more storage space you can configure this with a larger hard disk, although you will have to pay more to do so.

Whatever way you go, the Duo will come with Windows 7 Home Premium as well as a 10.1 capacitive display that can push 1366x768 pixels.

Add to this the Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator, that Dell was gracious enough to put in this thing, and you pretty much know you will have a great machine for multimedia, the Broadcom chip adding 1080p video hardware decoding to the Atom processor.

Unfortunately a HDMI output isn't among the connectors available on the Duo so you will be stuck with playing videos on its display, although this should prove to be pretty adequate for this task since it can handle 720p content with ease.

Speaking of connectivity options, these can be expanded via an optional JBL speaker-dock ($649 for both the Inspiron Duo and the dock) that adds two USB 2.0 ports as well as Ethernet and an audio port together with a multi-format memory card reader.

The non-removable power pack used by the Duo will offer around 4 hours of battery life in normal use scenarios, although I don't actually know what Dell considers “normal use.”

According to engadget, that spent some type with Dell's hybrid, the touchscreen was quite responsive to light taps, Dell's Duo Stage UI being automatically launched when the netbook is put into slate mode.

As I said earlier, pre-orders should start soon, the first units being shipped in the first week of December, the base configuration setting you back $549.