Dell has cut the base price on its Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook by a whole $50, pushing the cost down to a very reasonable $299 (hat tip: Liliputing).

Of course, this is very much the “bare bones” Mini 9, right down to the Obsidian Black color, with other flavors adding as much as $50 on top, and thats before any other upgrades like more DDR2 RAM, a bigger SSD drive, Bluetooth, and a webcam.

The Inspiron Mini 12 has also had its initial cost slashed, with an Ubuntu Linux machine now priced at $399. Expect many more netbook price cuts in the coming months as the competition heats up.