Samsung and Dell working on 11.6-inch netbooks

Looks like the era of 11-inches mini laptops has landed. Perhaps that is the reason that every netbook manufacture is now releasing 11.6-inch netbooks everyday or so. Reports are now coming that Samsung and Dell are now working on an 11.6-incher. Both will have a display resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.

Unfortunately, do to Microsoft OS policy, the netbook manufactures are not able to use the ‘fast’ Atom N270/N280 processor in the netbooks that are more than 10.2-inches. They are forced to use the slower Atom Z520 processor that runs at a comparatively slower speed of 1.3GHz.

When we reviewed the Acer Aspire 751, we found that although the processor was able to handle the Windows XP OS fairly well, the boot up and shut down times were more than what we would want them to be.

11-inch netbooks coming in 2009

If last year was the year of rise of 10.2-inch netbooks, this year, we are going to see 11.6-inch Netbooks. Asus and Acer are planning to launch 11.6-inch netbook models with a 1366 x 768 pixel resolution. If you guys do not know, this is the same resolution that is sported by the Sony Vaio TT series and VAIO TZ series. Till now, there are three major criteria that differentiate a netbook from a notebook:

• resolution
• screen size
• processor

First two are blurring away as netbook manufactures are not only bumping up the screen size, but resolution is also getting a jump from 1024 x 600. So what is next? Core 2 Duo or Celeron 2 processor in a netbook anyone?