The inquisitive guys over at Engadget have done their digging and have answered a question I had myself - is the $99 Inspiron Mini 9 really a genuinely good deal? Dell have a history of offering many confusing deals/promotions that seem to be too good to be true at times and Engadget took it upon themselves to break the $99 deal down for us all.

Basically, the deal is that you buy a full sized laptop/notebook from Dell and you can buy a Mini 9 for $99. It seems that Dell are actually charging the customer close to full price for the notebook in what seems to be an effort to absorb the cost of the Mini 9 - in other words, they are charging more for the notebook with the Mini 9 offer than they are if you buy the notebook on its own and the difference in price is roughly the cost of the Inspiron Mini’s list price of $349.

Not such a hot deal it seems, if you aren’t actually in the market for a new notebook. Certainly worth thinking twice before rushing into the deal in order to get your hands on the Inspiron Mini for the tempting price of $99.

Jkontherun is reporting that he has been discussing the Dell Inspiron Mini with Laptop Magazine and how Dell have prepared their new netbook to be easily upgradable in the future.

Dell seem to have made much effort to make the upgrading process as simple as possible for users. They have fitted a panel into the bottom of the unit which when removed gives full access to the wireless card, a free slot for wireless wan connection, the SSD module and the RAM slot.

It’s good to see a company thinking ahead for it’s customers, it would be nice to see other companies follow Dell’s example.