After seeing news about the Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) "E" mobile internet device (read: miniature laptop) last week, I was perplexed. True, Asus has had excellent luck with the Eee PC and Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ) has announced a similar miniature laptop-type PC. But for some reason, Dell's new product is being marketed as the device for the "30-minute web experience."

The new Dell E will come in two screen configurations -- a 12" and an 8.9". Basically, these are standard laptop PCs with scaled down hardware and ambitions, meant to fill the hole between the smartphone (or iPhone) and the full, 45-second-to-boot laptop PC. I thought this experiment was already run years ago with the ridiculously-priced UMPCs, which cost as much or more than a standard laptop PC. The good news is that Dell and HP's creations are starting out at a nice price point: $299.

This is basically a new price point for a laptop PC, no matter what the marketing says. This is good news for consumers. The combination of physical size, power and price may finally sway some buyers who really need a portable, instantly-usable laptop PC for short bursts of time. That, or the market will prove that there just is not a profitable spot between a smartphone with PC-like functions and a fully-usable laptop PC. That is, until all the things you do on a laptop focus around web access utilities and not applications like Microsoft Word and Excel and Adobe Photoshop.