The Dell Inspiron 11z is a thin and light laptop with an 11.6 inch display. It's a bit larger than Dell's Inspiron Mini netbook line, and it comes with an Intel CULV processor, which provides more power than the Atom chips found in Dell's netbooks. But the Inspiron 11z is still portable, cheap, and a little slow compared with many of the company's larger laptops.
The laptop comes with a variety of configuration options. Dell sent me a review unit with a 1.3GHz dual core Intel Pentium SU4100 processor, Windows 7 Home Premium, a 250GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and a 6 cell battery. This configuration sells for $544 (or actually, $584, since this model has a $40 jade green lid), but the base model is available for just $379.
Of course, to get the lower price, you'll have to settle for a 3 cell battery, single core processor, smaller hard drive, and Windows Vista.
Design
The Dell Inspiron 11z looks virtually identical to the Inspiron Mini 10v netbook. The main difference is that the 11z sports an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display while the Mini 10v has a smaller 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 screen. Along with the larger screen, you also get a larger computer chassis, a wider touchpad, and a full sized keyboard. The larger model also has an HDMI port.
Left: Inspiron 11z / Right: Insprion Mini 10v
Overall, the Inspiron 11z has the same simple look as its little sibling. There's only a single status LED, for example. The black plastic around the keyboard has a matte feel while the silver colored palm rest is shiny (although it doesn't attract fingerprints.
The base model comes with a black lid. For about $40 more you can get a pink, green, blue, red, purple, or white lid. Or you can use the Dell Design Studio to choose from more than 200 case designs.
Around the sides of the computer you'll find the usual array of ports including 3 USB ports, mic and headphone jacks, a memory card reader, Ethernet jack, and HDMI port.
There are no access panels on the bottom of the laptop, which means if you want to upgrade the RAM or hard drive, you're going to have to disassemble the PC and perform some minor surgery. Fortunately the base model ships with 2GB of RAM. But if you think you might want more memory, it might be a good idea to order it when you purchase the computer if you're not comfortable opening up your PC case.
The Dell Inspiron 11z is designed so that a 3 cell battery will sit flush with the base of the laptop. The 6 cell battery, on the other hand, sticks out like 3 or 4 sore thumbs.
With a 3 cell battery, the laptop is just under an inch thick. But a 6 cell battery adds almost an inch to the height of the laptop in the rear. That causes the keyboard to tilt at an almost-but-not-quite uncomfortable angle. While it's fairly common for PC makers to add a little tilt to the keyboard, I don't think I've ever used a PC with a keyboard angled quite as sharply as the one on the Dell Inspiron 11z.
On the bright side, because the battery juts straight down, it doesn't add any space to the back of the laptop. And that allows the screen to open a little wider than the screens on many laptops.
Keyboard and TouchPad
The Dell Inspiron 11z's touchpad is pretty much the same one used on the Inspiron Mini 10v, but bigger. You would have thought Dell could have used that extra space to place right and left buttons below the touchpad instead of integrating them into the touch area. But they didn't. And so find this touchpad just as frustrating to use as the one on Dell's 10 inch netbook.
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