Vodafone will soon release the brand new Dell Inspiron Mini 9 notebook line, bundled with mobile broadband through the carrier's 3G network. It is unclear yet which countries will be targeted by the Dell-Vodafone partnership or whether Vodafone will support both the Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP Home versions of the machine.

As Verizon Wireless is co-owned by Vodafone and US telco Verizon, it is quite possible that soon similar deals could hit the United States market as well. It is unknown how much of the laptop's price will Vodafone subsidize, but the announcement might just be the start of a trend, and similar notebooks might soon be subsidized the way that mobile phones are.

Dell has launched its Inspiron Mini 9 notebook line, which uses an Intel Atom-based platform with a glossy 8.9 inch LED display (1024X600), and comes in three flavors. All three are packing an Intel Atom N270 processor (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache), but they have different memory and hard drive configurations.

The low-end model features the Ubuntu Linux operating system and is equipped with 512MB of RAM and a 4GB solid state drive. The other two models feature Windows XP Home Edition and pack an 8GB or 16GB solid state drives, respectively. The mid-range notebook has also 512MB of RAM, as the Ubuntu model, but the "high" end model features 1GB of RAM. The three models cost $349, $399 and $449 respectively.

It is quite awkward that the lack of features, which is understandable in such a small and cheap package, made Dell list features such as: Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1, and such. There are add-on options as well: a $20 Bluetooth 2.1 add-on and a replacement 1.3 megapixel webcam instead of the .3M which is default, for $10 extra.

The Inspiron Mini 9 notebooks weigh around 2.28 pounds and measures 1.07 by 9.13 by 6.77 inches.

Dell alleges on one of its blogs that between 6 a.m. Central today, Sept. 5, you’ll be able to get a Mini for only $99 with the purchase of a Studio 15, XPS M1530 or XPS M1330 laptop through 6 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 9. The offer is allegedly available in the United States only.