Laptop Thoughts: Dell Inspiron M101z: AMD + 11.6' Screen

I guess this is Dell's answer to the HP dm1 - it features an 11.6" screen at 1366 x 768 resolution, Windows 7 Home Premium, an ATI RS880M GPU, 2 to 4 GB of RAM, under four pounds, 6.5 hours battery life from a six-cell battery, a 250 GB or 320 GB hard drive, and either the AMD Athlon II Neo K125 single core CPU (at 1.6 Ghz) or the dual core K325 also at 1.6 Ghz. Holy hell does AMD need to smack their branding team upside the head - every generation they tack on another word to their CPU names and they get harder and harder to spit out. Just call it the AMD Neo, OK?

Funky colours include clear black, peacock blue (Engadget has a picture of that), tomato red, or lotus pink. Looks like all have a pattern except the black. Bleh. Patterns are such a hit or miss with me - mostly a miss. At least Dell offers the pattern-free black option, something I dearly with HP would do. They've literally driven me away from purchasing some of their laptops because the pattern was so repulsive, and they didn't offer any pattern-free option.

Anyway, pricing looks to start at around $400 to $450 USD. The page is live in the UK, but not in the USA or Canada yet.