Reports are surfacing that Dell has decided to no longer provide a 12" Netbook range. According to Dell this is due to the fact that, according to the user base, 10" is the 'sweet spot' for Netbooks and there isn't a great deal of a market for the slightly larger 12", as a result the size will be disbanded.

So, should you read anything into this as far as Dell's commitment to the netbook space? Nope. It really boils down to this: for a lot of customers, 10-inch displays are the sweet spot for netbooks. That's why we offer two different 10-inch Inspiron netbooks for Mini 10 and the Mini 10v. And on the Latitude side, the Latitude 2100 netbook is finding a home in schools all over the place. Portability is one of the key points for netbook customers. Larger notebooks require a little more horsepower to be really useful. More to come from Dell on that later.

But back to the subject of netbooks.The Inspiron Mini 9 is available again on Dell.com for the time being. I tried to reach the Mini 9 to see how long she'd be around, but she wasn't available for comment like she was last time.