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10 inches is the new 9 inches (for Netbooks, at least)

We're pleased to report that the 10-inch Netbook trend is in full swing, with two big holdouts, Dell and Acer, finally getting on board.

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
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Dan Ackerman
Dell's upcoming Mini 10 Netbook.

When 9-inch Netbooks started to replace the original 7-inch models, we got firmly behind that trend. When 10-inch Netbooks started to appear, we declared that we liked them better than the 9-inch versions, but many PC makers didn't immediately follow suit.

Now we're pleased to report that the 10-inch Netbook trend is in full swing, with two big holdouts, Dell and Acer, getting on board.

Dell semi-secretly showed off the 10-inch version of its Netbook at CES, minus pricing and details, but now a U.K. store called Tesco has it for sale at 349 pounds, which is about $480. It's currently listed as "out of stock," but has a standard Atom/XP/1GB RAM configuration, with a 160GB hard drive. U.S. details have yet to surface.

Concurrently, Acer (which owns a surprisingly large percentage of the Netbook market thanks to steep discounts on the 9-inch Acer Aspire One), has finally officially announced a 10-inch version of the Aspire One, which may very well completely replace the smaller model in Acer's lineup. Final price and release date are still up in the air.

Update: Turns out the system Tesco is selling is actually a mislabeled 9-inch Dell Mini 9, so we'll have to wait a little while longer for the 10-inch version.