The low-cost, low-performance sub-notebook market continues to grow at an accelerated pace, and Dell is reportedly making the latest adjustments before jumping into the sub-$500 notebook bandwagon. The company will join the pack of manufacturers including ECS, Everex, Asustek and HP.

Asustek, the real originator of this trend is gearing up to release another smashing offer, embodied by its 9-inch Eee PC. Hewlett-Packard just announced that it is ready to ship its 2133 mini-Note UMPC powered by a stripped distribution of SuSE Linux. Dell could not miss the party and comes to deliver a tough blow to HP's educational device.

Dell will enter on the UMPC market with a Compal-manufactured 8.9-inch sub-notebook. According to the latest reports emerging from CNN, Compal will ship 200,000 to 300,000 of the notebooks to Dell each month starting with June this year.

Michael Dell, the company's founder and CEO claimed that "we will introduce a similar laptop," as a response to HP's 2133 Mini-Note PC. "We do see opportunities for very interesting products that are smaller and lighter and address the more mobile users in a very cost-effective way," he continued.

Dell's statement is leaving room to speculations, and it seems that the computer manufacturer is aiming at taking down Hewlett-Packard, rather than Asustek. After all, Dell has been trailing HP for some time now on the system market, and a boost in UMPC sales could bring some balance between the two computer builders.

Although it's for sure that Dell's UMPC will come with an 8.9-inch screen, there are no additional details about the rest of the hardware. However, given the fact that the notebook will show up in June, this leads us to believe that it could be powered by Intel's Atom processor, that will be introduced at the same time.