Dell Inspiron 11z
The Dell Inspiron 11z is Dell’s attempt at rivalling Asus Eee’s ultra-portable, suave looking netbooks. And it does a great effort. It’s incredibly stylish, being available in a range of colours. It’s thin, it’s incredibly light and it’s definitely the kind of laptop that you can just sling in your bag before heading out the door. It’s great for browsing around on the Internet, checking your emails and, in truth, anything that isn’t too graphics intensive (netbooks were never designed for playing Call of Duty).
Despite sounding dull, the best thing about this netbook is the keyboard – despite it’s tiny 11 inch screen and small size, it’s got an almost full size keyboard – and it works brilliantly. Dell have really used all of the space they possibly could out of the body by having the keys go right to the edge, and it works. The trackpad supports multi-touch gestures, which sounds great on paper, but Dell sadly haven’t executed it quite as well. It’d be fine if the buttons weren’t built into the trackpad directly, but they are – and this tends to make it harder to use. You do get used to it, but it can be tricky.
Still, for a netbook that looks as good as it does (and costs as little as it does), considering that’s the only gripe, it’s not too bad. The Inspiron 11z comes in at a reasonable £349 which gets you a netbook with an excellent, high quality 11 inch screen, 2 GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard-drive (impressive for a laptop so small). Even if you choose the higher spec options to really kit it out (a 320 GB hard-drive and 4 GB of RAM, for example) you’re still looking at under £500. Just. If you’re looking for a netbook and aren’t planning on doing anything graphically demanding, the Inspiron 11z might be the one for you. Just make sure you buy an extra mouse if you don’t have the patience to get used to the trackpad.
