It’s Official: Dell Enters the Netbook Fray

Dell joins the craze of ultraportable, low-cost notebooks with an 8.9-inch netbook starting at $349 with the popular Linux distribution and $399 with Windows XP. Both solid-state and online storage are standard.

Asus’ Eee PC was first; Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Acer, MSI, and Lenovo followed; and now Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) has dived into the flood of low-cost, ultralight laptops commonly known as netbooks.