European Mini 9 owners have all the luck it seems. Dell have already announced that Vodafone will be teaming up with them to provide 3G mobile broadband support for the Mini 9. For US owners however, there is no such deal yet.

A spokeswoman for Dell has confirmed also that there is no chance of just placing a 3G module into your Mini 9 either:

“The Mini doesn’t have the internal antenna infrastructure needed to support mobile broadband”.

Basically, to include the necessary internal antenna would increase the cost of the Mini 9 way beyond it’s list price of $474. Dell won’t be fitting antenna’s to your Inspiron Mini either, when 3G is available the only way to use the service is to buy a brand new Mini 9 that will support it.

Not the best of news for anyone that has already ordered one of Dell’s first netbooks.

via: Gearlog

Dell is really up on its heel in trying to find a way to make its Inspiron Mini 9 netbook stand out from the rest of the netbook crowd. If the officially released specs, features and models of the Inspiron Mini didn’t excite that much, how about if we say that Dell and Vodafone are planning to release a 3G-capable version of the said netbook.

Said broadband-capable Inspiron Mini 9 will be made available in various Vodafone retail stores as well as on Dell online. Release date would probably late this September or early October.

Hopefully this sparks more interest to the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, or else we might not see an Inspiron Mini 10 perhaps?

Via Gadgetell, CNN 

Today is certainly Dell Inspiron Mini 9 day. Finally, after tons of rumors, leaked photos and what-have-yous, Dell has officially announced the release of its official entry into the netbook wars. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 officially becomes an legitimate Eee PC Competor.

All the features that we enumerated were confirmed by the official release as well, including Dell’s tie-up with Box.net for exclusive web-based file storage, access and sharing for Mini 9 users. This includes a 2GB of remote storage which is part of Box.net’s free Basic plan. In addition, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 will have direct link to Dell’s exclusive home page on Box.net/dell.

The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is bundled with Dell Video Chat which enables users to video cat, record and send video emails, make PC-to-PC phone calls and four-way calling features.