Reportedly, the recently unveiled Dell Inspiron Mini ultra portable will come in August with optimised keyboard that is “unique to Dell”. The main reason why Dell is late in the "mini notebook" game is that they were working pretty hard on keyboard design to provide "as best as possible the best user experience for this class of products." The alpha keys are all of a good size, but the function keys have been dropped altogether: the Fn modifier activates hardware-related shortcuts mapped onto the keyboard, with no facility to call up the usual F1-F12 keys. “This was a trade off so the rest of the keys could be bigger”, said Alex Gruzen, senior vice president for Dell’s Consumer Product Group.

The mini-laptop is expected to feature Intel's Atom processor, and Microsoft Windows / Linux operating system. The Inspiron Mini also sports three USB ports, VGA output and a memory card reader.

[Via APC]