First impressions are good, with the Mini 10 oozing class: the screen sits flush with the wide bezel, the red lid looks inviting and classy rather than garish, and the lack of chrome around the rest of the case, aside from the small power button, leaves the Dell looking more mature than most netbooks.

Handling the Mini 10 assuaged any fears that the good looks would be let down by poor build quality. The screen hardly flexes at all and rocks solidly on its hinges, and the wrist-rest offers none of the weakness that’s often seen on cheaper netbooks and budget laptops.

The screen provides good image quality, too, and doesn’t suffer from the uncomfortable graining that afflicts plenty of the Dell’s netbook rivals. The native resolution of 1,024 x 576 is a departure from the 1,024 x 600 that seems standard across most netbooks, including the A Listed Samsung NC10, and leaves the panel feeling a tad cramped compared to rivals – the lookalike HP Compaq Mini-Note, for instance, has a resolution of 1,280 x 768.

The keyboard stretches across the entire width of the chassis and the keys themselves are almost full-size, resulting in one of the most comfortable keyboards we’ve used on a netbook. There’s plenty of travel, a positive action and no odd layout decisions, and we found ourselves touch-typing within seconds.

We’re less keen on the trackpad, though. Netbooks have, so far, opted for buttons either below or either side of the pad, but Dell’s Mini 10 is one of the first that has its pair of buttons built in to the surface itself. The result is awkward: it’s easy to zip the cursor around the screen, but the raised nubbins used to click are too small, meaning that clicking is too precise to be comfortable. It’s a shame that such a good keyboard has been paired with a mediocre trackpad.

Inside the accomplished chassis is a mix of standard netbook parts and quirkier fare. Most netbooks may use Intel’s single-core Atom N270 processor, but the Mini 10 employs a 1.33GHz Atom Z520. It’s also a single core part, but one designed primarily for MID devices – we saw a similar CPU, the 1.6GHz Z530, in the Sony VAIO P Series, which struggled to run Vista. The Dell Mini 10 sensibly sticks with XP, which feels zippy in use, but we’ll let our benchmarks do the talking when it comes to the definitive verdict on performance, and how the Dell compares to its netbook rivals.

Elsewhere, the Dell is a mixture of capable and confusing. The 1GB of RAM is more than enough to handle some XP multi-tasking and the 160GB hard disk is at the upper limits of what we’ve seen in netbooks. However, there’s no draft-n wireless unless you pay for an upgrade on Dell’s website, and if you’d like a higher screen resolution then a 1,366 x 768 panel will cost an extra £15.

Intel’s GMA 500 graphics are par for the course, too, but the inclusion of an HDMI port seems pointless: while standard definition video runs smoothly whether in Windows Media Player or streaming on YouTube, high-definition footage proved too much, with 720p and 1080p clips proving juddery and unwatchable.

Another worry could be battery life: a 3-cell lithium-ion unit is included with the Mini 10, with a power rating of 2,200mAh, and Dell offers no chance to upgrade to a 6-cell unit on its website. With other netbooks, such as the Samsung and Asus Eee PC 1000HE, lasting well over seven hours, it’s looking difficult for Dell to compete on that particular front.

Our first impressions, then, suggest that the Mini 10 is an intriguing mix of familiar and unusual: the excellent keyboard, decent screen and superb build quality seems coupled with an unusual choice of CPU and a divisive trackpad. Keep checking the site for a full review next week.

“If [the Eee PC from] Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That’s just a race to the bottom.”

Those were the words of Sony’s senior vice president Mike Arbary, as reported in our news story back in February.

Well I’ve got some bad news for you, Mike. The race to the bottom is well and truly on, and you’ve not even reached the starting line yet.

Dell has today become the latest company to unveil an Eee PC rival, with its Mini-Inspiron (good to see Dell hasn’t lost its touch with imaginative product names).

That bears more than an uncanny resemblance to HP’s Mini Note, which failed to knock the Eee of its pedestal according to our laptops editor, but will still increase interest in this ultra-low budget market.

So that’s HP and Dell on board,  and Acer’s heavily rumoured to be biding its time with an Eee rival of its own. How much longer can Sony afford to hold out? I’ll give it until Christmas.