The Inspiron Mini 12 has now popped up on Dell's U.S. website - and you can order one for as little as $549. The base model features a glossy 12.1" 1280x800 display, a 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z520 processor, 1GB of memory, a 40GB 4,200-RPM hard disk drive, a three-cell battery rated for around three hours of run-time, and a copy of Windows Vista Home Basic. There's also Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11g Wi-Fi, and the requisite webcam and card reader. You can cough up an extra $50 to get a 1.6GHz processor, 60GB hard drive, and six-cell battery (rated for 6.5 hours), and Dell offers a $678 variant of the system with an 80GB hard drive and a longer warranty. The company quotes a ship date of December 8 for all three flavors, so some Inspirion Mini 12s may well find themselves under Christmas trees next month. Looking at the overall shape of the netbook market, $549 doesn't seem half bad for a 2.72-pound system with a 12.1" screen, the same display resolution as many full-sized laptops, and Windows Vista. For reference, Asus' $480 Eee PC 1000H has a more cramped 10" 1024x600 display and comes with Windows XP, although it does include a six-cell battery, a faster CPU, and a higher-capacity hard drive.