You may recall last month we told you that Packard Bell is back. We told you all about some of their new range including the netbooks dot m and dot s.

Well now they’ve gone and announced another netbook, the strangely named dot m/a. The dot m/a is the first netbook to come with an AMD processor – the single-core 1.2GHz Athlon 64 L110. That’s all great. Except it’s not really a netbook. It’s a small, entry-level notebook.

The specs support my argument – the screen is 11.6-inch with a resolution of 1366×768. It’s got a graphics card – the ATI Radeon X1270 and it weighs 1.25kg. That’s a bit too hefty for a netbook in my opinion.

Packard Bell even state that they keyboard is “as large as a regular notebook”. Err, that’s because it is a regular notebook.

Ok, so we’ve established it’s not exactly a netbook but what has it got going for it? Well, for £349, it’s not a bad budget option if you’re after a fairly compact notebook.

It’s got a 160GB hard-drive with 1GB of RAM – both of which are expandable to double their current size. It has a multi-gesture touch pad including pinch and flick for you iPhone fans and it’s got a 5-in-1 memory card reader. Like other Packard Bell releases it comes complete with Adobe Photoshop elements pre-installed. Bluetooth and 3G can be added at an extra cost.

It’s pre-loaded with Vista so presumably it would qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 7, according to the statement released by Microsoft yesterday. It’s available in black or red and with a three or six-cell battery. The six-cell should give four hours of battery life.

It’s out next month – get one direct from Packard Bell. Just don’t expect to receive a netbook.