Vodafone to Resell Dell's Netbook

Dell's new netbook, the Inspiron Mini 9, will be sold with built-in mobile broadband by Vodafone, the companies announced on Thursday.

Dell's entry in the growing netbook space weighs in at just over 1 kilogram, and has an 8.9-inch LED display. Like some of its competitors it has an SSD (solid state disk) for storage, holding up to 16G bytes.

The mobile broadband connection in the Vodafone version supports HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access).

Vodafone will start selling the Mini 9 later this month, but has not yet said in which countries it will offer the netbook. For now its "in key European markets", the operator said.

Vodafone will announce pricing later, but if you just want the netbook, it sells elsewhere for from £299 (US$526) in the U.K. A version with Ubuntu's version of the Linux operating system, with a user interface customized by Dell, will also go on sale with a starting price of £269.

Vodafone isn't announcing which operating system it has picked, or if both will be available, according to company spokesman Ben Taylor.