It was a nice run. A lot of folks did expect more 12 inch models from Dell. But it seems Dell has had enough of them, so don’t expect to find Mini 12 in stores in a short while. Dell’s chief blogger put it as simply as anyone could:

It really boils down to this: for a lot of customers, 10-inch displays are the sweet spot for netbooks.

So essentially, Dell is trying to stick with what works and avoid going for larger screen machines. I am a bit torn here. As a consumer, I do want to see larger screen netbooks. And I do believe that there is a market for them. But I also agree with Dell’s take on all this. A lot of people are already frustrated with their netbooks as far as their performance is concerned. A lot of netbook fans expect better performance from their larger screen netbooks. But these machines cost more money and don’t deliver performance-wise. I do disagree with Dell about the whole sweet spot issue. I believe that the market can handle 11.6 inch netbooks. Anything above that should probably be a fully-fledged laptop. And you can always go for ultra thin CULV machines if you expect better performance from your notebook.

Will I miss Dell Mini 12? Not so much. I was never a fan of Dell netbooks, and the company has never sold me on their products. Besides, for every netbook that dies, 3 or 4 new ones take its place. So Dell fans may miss Mini 12, but the market moves on to better things (you can still pick your Mini 12 up before it goes out of stock). Let’s hope netbook makers focus more on providing more horsepower and RAM on new netbook models and less playing around with various screen sizes.