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A lot of folks (myself included) have pointed out that you can get an Acer Aspire One laptop with 1GB of RAM and an 8GB SSD for $20 less than the cheapest Dell Inspiron Mini 9. But Kevin Tofel of jkOnTheRun makes an interesting point – the Dell netbook may include a faster SSD module.

It appears that Dell is using a solid state disk from STEC which is capable of up to 85 MBps read speeds and 25 MBps write speeds, which means that it should be 2-3 times faster than the SSD in the Acer Aspire One.

Kevin also makes an educated guess that the SSD is a PCI Express card which could be easily upgraded. While Dell is only offering 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB options, STEC also makes a 32GB module which means Dell could release a system with a additional storage capacity later.

Does this mean the Dell Inspiron Mini is really a better deal than the Acer Aspire One? That depends on your needs — and on how the netbook performs in real world tests. Until I see someone post some benchmarks or perform some side by side comparisons, I’m withholding judgment. But the news is promising.