Upon yesterday’s release of Dell’s new Inspiron Mini 9 Series, they forgot for some unknown reason to mention what is perhaps the most distinguishing feature of their new netbook line: The Inspiron comes with a built in 3G card.

This particular feature is unique to the Dell’s mini notebooks, as none of the competitors’ products have this feature from the get-go.

Not only that but Dell has signed an exclusive contract with Vodafone who will sell the netbook together with a mobile broadband package which supports High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA). Vodafone have stated that they will start marketing the laptop later this month in “key European markets”.

Meanwhile, Dell retails the Inspiron Mini 9 for $399 for the 8GB SSD version with Windows XP Home preinstalled, and $349 for the 4GB version which sports Dell’s version of Ubuntu Linux 8.04.

Note that both versions use a Solid-State Drive for storage instead of a hard-disk. The solution offers the advantage of no moving parts, but at a cost of storage space, due to current limitations of flash drive technology. Its processor is a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270, it has 512 MB of RAM, with an upgrade option of up to 1GB. Also included are the Intel 865 chipset, Bluetooth, a 4 cell, 32-W/hour batter, three USB ports and a four-in-one card reader, also a lock. The LED screen’s diagonal is 8.9 inches.

Dell also has a partnership with box.net for a web file-storage service starting at 2GB, but extending up to 25 GB, hopefully attenuating some of the space issues. Having to pay a monthly subscription, however, just to be able to access your files, doesn’t seem like the most inspired solution to us. That is, of course if you happen to have internet access at the time, of course. With the built-in 3G adapter and the Vodafone deal however, this doesn’t look like it’s going to be an issue.