Dell Inspiron Mini 9 small cheap laptop

It's Dell's turn to try and take on Asus and be crowned king of the mini laptops. Its new Inspiron Mini 9 can certainly give the Eee PC a run for its money - especially in the style stakes thanks to its piano black lid.

Equipped with a 8.9in screen and measuring just 232x172x32mm it certainly fits in size-wise and as it only just tips the scales at 1Kg (including battery) it would make an ideal travel companion.

Inside it's powered by Intel's energy efficient Atom chip, running at 1.6GHz, and up to 1GB of RAM. Hard drive space runs up to 16GB and as it uses flash memory, rather than a spinning disk, it's more resilient to shock. It's available with Windows XP pre-installed, or for £30 less if you opt for Ubuntu Linux instead.

The Inspiron Mini 9 will be available in October from £269, see Dell for further details.