Digital Home Thoughts: 12.1-inch Dell E Slim Laptop

"It's hard to say what we've come across here, but if our retinas aren't deceiving us too badly, this looks to be an in the wild shot (sans blur, amazingly) of Dell's forthcoming E Slim. If you'll recall, we caught a glimpse of said device way back in June, and the two look at least marginally similar using the oh-so-scientific eyeball test. But look, even if this thing isn't the E Slim (though we're guessing it is until proven otherwise), we've been told on numerous occasions that Dell is mulling the idea of pumping out a netbook with a 10- to 12-inch display. An accompanying screenshot of the unit's internals was also provided, and while the model may say Optiplex1210, we're guessing that's just there for prototyping purposes; besides, the listed CPU matches up quite nicely with the aforementioned E Slim specs that slipped out this summer."

I'm not convinced this is a new Dell netbook. Why? Because the System Properties screenshot over on Engadget shows a CPU speed of 1.33 Ghz - I can't imagine Dell using anything other than the Intel Atom at 1.6 Ghz, or perhaps the dual-core version (which is also at 1.6 Ghz). And that's Windows Vista, which isn't netbook friendly - especially with only a 1.33 GHz CPU. Instead I think this is a Macbook Air compeditor - which is great, I'm all for thin and light notebooks...as long as they don't compromise too much on battery life.