Photo courtesy of Dell

Do you remember those awful old days when so-called ultraportable notebooks with 10 to 12 inch displays cost between $1500 and $3000? Then, along came the affordable sub-$400 netbooks which had very decent feature sets, a small size and, of course, a great price. Then, manufacturers started selling netbooks with 12 inch displays that seemed too big and too expensive to be called netbooks.

So, I'm really glad to see Dell announce this unNetbook...

Vostro 1220: no-compromise ultraportable laptop

Its base price is between $800 and $1030 and weighs in at 3.36 lbs. So, it costs a bit more and weighs a bit more than the typical 12 inch display netbook. But, the Vostro 1220 delivers a lot of features including the option to have up to 8GB RAM. The low-end model uses a Celeron processor. So, you'll probably want to look more closely at the mid and high end models with Core 2 Duo processors (no more Atom). And, yes, they all came standard with a DVD burner in that 3+ pound package. The 6-cell battery is rated at up to 9 hours. So, I'm hoping that translate to between 5 and 7 hours of actual battery life.

If current generation netbooks are just a bit short of the processing power you need, you might want to take a look at the Vostro 1220. I know it has me interested.