If you’ve always thought buying a netbook would be a great idea if only there was a bit more screen real estate, you’ll be excited to see that the only netbook with a 12-inch display, the Inspiron Mini 12, is up for configurable grabs at Dell’s Web site.

A basic config of the Mini 12 (which we discuss exhaustively in our full review) can be yours for $549 and will include a 1.3-GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 40GB mechanical hard drive, a 3-cell battery, and Windows Vista Home Basic. For $599 you can upgrade to a 60GB HDD, an Atom processor with a faster 1.6-GHz clock speed, and the 6-cell battery. And $649 greenbacks will get you all the latter with a bigger 80GB HDD.

The system also comes in your choice of “Alpine White” or “Obsidian” black. Both colors are the same price.

Two words of caution if you’re considering purchasing the Mini 12:

1. Right now, Windows Vista Basic is the only OS choice offered. Based on our review, we definitely recommend holding out for an XP or Linux version.

2. For a spare $30 bucks, the 6-cell battery is definitely worth the dough. It lasted 5 hours and 20 minutes during our battery test, showing endurance that walloped other netbooks (with smaller 10-inch displays) excluding of the 6 hours-plus Samsung NC10 (which also has a smaller 10-inch display).

That said, go check out the Mini 12 for yourself here. Happy shopping.

blog.laptopmag.com