Hands on with the Dell Inspiron Duo Convertible Netbook

Our friends over at Laptop Mag have spent some time with Dell’s new convertible systems the Inspiron Duo. The Duo comes with a premium 320GB 7,200 rpm drive as well as a dual-core 1.5-GHz Intel Atom N550 CPU, 2GB of RAM, and Windows 7 home premium. That it also comes with a 1366 x 768 screen, and it’s a huge step up from low-end netbooks.

This netvertible is different then every other convertible netbook on the market since you spin the screen around that then rotate the whole lid left or right. So the screen screen not the lid is rotatable. This is an interesting design concept since it allows the device to use the firm hinges of a regular notebook. The biggest down side to this innovation is that the bezel is incredibly thick not only does it have a rubberized lid around the screen, but also some black padding on the screen itself. This form factor has always had one draw back and its the hinge however the rotating mechanism seems incredibly sturdy. No matter how many times they flipped it, the lid quickly slapped firmly into place.

Th keyboard has slightly rubberized keys and falls inline with Dell’s other netbook keyboards which as slightly above average in quality. There is however an issue with the trackpad, this is however almost a mute point since you will be using the touch screen for the most part. The track could have been improved by making the buttons flush with the front lip of the chassis. There is a .25-inches gap which caused the guys over at Laptop Mag to frequently ended up tapping the empty plastic space below the buttons when they were trying to click.

Looking at the touch screen it has a two-finger-capable capacitive screen which seemed to work quick well in terms of responsiveness and accuracy. An interesting addition is the Dell Stage which is Dell’s own touch-based UI that comes with a handful of touch-friendly apps. The Dell stage contains seven large, finger-friendly shortcut buttons you can use to load the associated apps. These are labeleld Music, Photo, Video, Books, Internet, Paint, and Games. In future upgrades of the Dell Stage they should think of including the ability to add any apps we want, there didn’t appear to be any way to add additional shortcuts of our own.

When you purchase the Inspiron Duo, you can also buy a $100 speaker dock, which Laptop has featured in the video below. To connect to the dock, you must be in slate mode and hold the Inspiron Duo in landscape orientation. Depending on your settings the Duo will either switches to clock mode where it displays the time and plays soothing music, launches a slideshow (like a photo frame), or maintains focus on the software you were using when you plugged it in. Like any good docking station it comes with additional ports which are two USB ports, audio-out jack, and an Ethernet port.