Yesterday Dell unveiled it’s latest in a long line of desktop computers, the Studio Hybrid. Catering to the green crowd, the system offers energy-efficient computing in several cool colors. Starting at $499 and a little bigger than an external hard drive, it is both priced and sized to compete with Apple’s Mac Mini.

For $499, a Studio Hybrid can be had with a Pentium Dual Core at 1.86 GHz, 1 GB RAM, a 160 GB 5400 RPM hard drive, a DVD burner, and integrated X3100 HDMI/DVI graphics. The specs are close to that of the Mac Mini, but upgrading to a Core 2 Duo costs $50 extra and adding internal Wi-Fi is $70. Adding that in to the $499 price, you have a system that costs $619, a tad more than the $599 base price of the Mac Mini, but is a bit more powerful with its larger hard drive and better graphics. The Hybrid ships with Vista Home Basic, so plan on adding $30 to the price tag to upgrade to Home Premium, bringing the system to $639 to compete with the Mac Mini.

Ever since Steve Jobs unveiled the new iMac more than a year ago and showed how ugly the Dell XPS looked next to it in his keynote address, it seems like Dell has been putting itself back in shape. The Studio Hybrid isn’t the only Dell product that competes with Apple. There’s the XPS One, which is priced very similar to the iMac, and I’m sure when Apple releases their new notebooks in the coming months, Dell will have something up their sleeve.