First look: the new 11.6in Packard Bell netbook

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Netbooks have fallen into a steady routine since their 2007 debut: get a small chassis, cram it with an Intel Atom processor and integrated graphics, and watch them fly off the shelves. However, Packard Bell’s latest attempt to crack the lucrative netbook market, the 11.6in “dot m”, is a little different.

A glance at the exterior suggests that little about the classic netbook formula has changed: the 11.6in screen has a native resolution of 1,366 x 768, the trackpad is small but has a decent pair of buttons and supports multitouch functions, and the keyboard is reasonably spacious but also felt quite spongy. Three USB ports, an Ethernet socket and D-SUB output aren’t exactly groundbreaking, either.

Peek under the hood, though, and Packard Bell’s latest looks far more interesting than the average Atom-based products that have flooded the netbook market.

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