Inspiron M102z Is Dell's Newest AMD Fusion Brazos Laptop

ASUS may be building upon its Intel Atom designs, but it seems Dell is not lazying about either, although its own efforts seem to have stretched over to AMD's side of the field, as shown by the Inspiron M102z.

Tablets may be starting to eat at laptops' market share, but this doesn't mean the latter are going to disappear any time soon.

Still, the rapid development of the former has prompted some movement on the part of netbook and ultraportable makers.

For instance, not long ago, ASUS upgraded the Eee PC 1015PN netbook by giving its Intel's Atom N570 dual-core CPU.

Now, Dell has presented the Inspiron M102z, an ultraportable powered by AMD's Fusion Brazos platform.

The product has a WLED-backlit 11.6-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) whose resolution is 1,366 x 768 pixels.

There is also mention of a multi-card reader, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and a pair of 1.5W speakers (SRS Surround Sound).

One version ($699) has the dual-core C-50 AMD APU (accelerated processing unit), whose clock is 1.0 GHz and which has the built-in Radeon HD 6250 graphics. This machine also features a 320 GB HDD (7,200 RPM), 2 GB RAM, Bluetooth 3.0 and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, plus a 6-cell battery.

The more powerful configuration relies on the 1.6 GHz E-350 dual-core chip (has the Radeon HD 6310 graphics) and a 500 GB HDD, plus 4 GB RAM).

Both of the above run the Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium operating systems and can last for up to 13 hours and 57 minutes on a single battery charge when the 6-cell battery is replaced with a 9-cell one (the former provides 9 hours of runtime).

Those that want to buy either of the above configurations need only drop by the official product page, located here.