Dell's Mini Inspiron arrives in August, without dedicated Function key row

There's still no official word from Dell that shares the specifications of their sub-notebook, so until that happens, we'll probably get it piecemeal. Once piece that's likely going to be missing on the Mini Inspiron (not necessarily the official name... I still like "Minspiron") is a dedicated row of function keys. APC got some quality time with Dell and the company has apparently removed the Fn keys in order to make the remaining keys bigger; presumably to provide a better typing experience. You'll still have keys with mapped functions, but they'll be in a custom configuration to Dell's liking. I'm not a huge Function key user, so I don't really mind what the actual Function combos are, but some folks might get in a tizzy over this. It could be worse the way I look at it: Dell could have done a study and found out that we just aren't using the "Z" key that much any more and removed it, instead. That would have been a little zealous of them... oh wait... I need that "Z" key after all...

Dell indicated an August launch, so I gather we'll be hearing more on the netbook zooner rather than later. I just noticed on the pic above, you can pretty much tell the Function row is a goner.

(via Liliputing)

Comments

[Luis]

From the APC post “This is a 20-30 minute experience, or however much time it takes to have a cup of coffee. You come to a hotspot, check some information like stock prices, upload some photos, then shut it down and go”.
To me this says small standard battery capacity in their present plans, not good.