Dell quietly launches the Inspiron M101z

AMD Athlon II Neo powered

AMD SEEMS TO be having a bit more luck with notebook manufacturers these days as its most recent mobile processors are turning up here, there and everywhere. The latest sighting is in the latest 11.6-inch notebook from Dell, the Inspiron M101z that have quietly made an appearance on Dell’s UK website.

The M101z is quite compact at 292x205x35mm (11.5×8.07×1.38in) measured at its thickest point and it weighs in at a reasonable 1.56kg (3.44lb), but this is still quite chunky compared to Dell’s older Inspiron 11z which measures 292x214x25.8mm and weighs in at 1.39kg. The extra weight is courtesy of a 6-cell 56WHr battery which Dell claims will power the M101z for up to 6h and 36 minutes. That’s not exactly impressive by today’s standards where many notebook manufacturers claim 8+ hours of battery life.

So what about the hardware? Well, Dell has gone for a choice of either a single or a dual core Athlon II Neo processor and as such the choice is limited to the single core K125 at 1.7GHz or the dual core K324 at 1.3GHz. We would’ve like to have seen the option of a kitting out the M101z with one of AMD’s Turion II Neo processors as well, as this option is available on the Inspiron M301z. The CPU is paired up with AMD’s mobile M880G chipset – also known as the RS880M – and the SB820M southbridge. This also means that you get Radeon HD 4250 graphics with support for hardware video acceleration for 1080p video.

The 11.6-inch screen has resolution of 1366×768 which is pretty much industry standard for this panel size. Other features include options of up to 320GB worth of hard drive space, up to 4GB of RAM, an HDMI port, three USB 2.0 ports, a D-sub connector, a pair of audio jacks, a 1.3Megapixel webcam, 10/100Mbit Ethernet and a memory card reader. All configurations also come with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0 support. Dell also offers the M101z with four different lid covers which consists of clear black, peacock blue, lotus pink and tomato red.

The starting price of £379 ($587) isn’t super cheap as the older Inspiron 11z offers better value for money and interestingly the Inspiron M301z also starts at the same price point. To get a dual core CPU you need to fork out £429 ($665), while the fully kitted out model will set you back £499 ($773). There’s no word on when this model will launch in the US, but Dell US doesn’t list the M301z as available for purchase either, so maybe we’ll see a launch of both these models in the near future.S|A

The following two tabs change content below.