Misc. Gadgetry: The Dell Mini 9
A box of tiny awesome arrived on my doorstep last night in the form of the a Dell Mini. This is Dell’s aswer to the crazy tiny laptop market that has sprung up, and it’s definitely better than Armored Core’s For Answer.
The first thing you’ll notice on the mini is the incredibly glossy top section. Seriously, this thing is practically a mirror. And fingerprints if you look at it wrong. Just plan on this happening, you will not avoid it. If you’re obsessive about keeping things spotless and smudge-free, the mini-9 will have you scrubbing constantly.
Regarding functionality, this thing is pretty solid. The netbook’s selling point has consistently been the amount of power packed into a package roughly the size of a thin hardback book, and this unit offers the same 1.6ghz processor and 1gb memory stick as the rest. A solid state hard drive limits the storage, but also frees the passively-cooled mini 9 of any moving parts (or noise) whatsoever. Power-wise, it’ll run open Office, Hulu, Pandora, etc. with no worries. My unit (hehheh, unit) came with a 1.3MP webcam, which works great in a well-lit room.
Other features include the standard microphone/headphone jack, a VGA port, 3 USB ports, and an SD/all-in-one port.
Other hardware on the laptop works well, too. The keyboard is the most noticeable con here, with a variety of bizarre key shifts and shrinks to accomodate the reduced size. None of these are deal-breakers, though. I’m currently writing this on the mini and while my typing speed isn’t the same as with a full keyboard, for something that takes up about as much space as a folded t-shirt it’s perfectly acceptable. The battery lasts about three hours according to the PR stuff, and I’ve gotten that on the initial charge while setting up XP and installing a variety of software. Off and on use with the speakers off today has burned up 20% of the battery in about an hour and a half, so your mileage may vary.
The trackpad deserves its own mention, as it’s fantastic. Pointer movement is precise and the buttons have a great tactile feel to them. Given the lukewarm reception of so many of the other netbook touchpads have had this is a pleasant surprise.
Internally, everything you’ll want to access is super modular. The (one slot only) memory and (solid state) hard drive are easy to get to, and by other reports quite simple to swap out. A 2GB RAM stick isn’t available through Dell, but is apparently supported. Hard drives go from 4GB to 32, and 2GB of online storage are bundled with the system. Given that I store my music on an external hard drive, the 16GB solid state drive I ordered proved plenty for a few applications and a pile of documents. Transferring 5GB of documents from the drive to the SSD took about 5-10 minutes.
Overall this is a fantastic little device. It doesn’t have enough horsepower to run anything recent, but old-school gaming is a great fit for this ultraportable. My Mother 3 emulation (I bought the game, stop glaring at me) worked perfectly and looked gorgeous on the 9″ display.
So, final verdict: pretty solid. This is not a device for everyone; some people will hate the shrunken keyboard, and some just need more horsepower than this even on a portable device. I highly recommend trying out a test system in a store and using the keyboard thoroughly (open up notepad and start typing) before you take the plunge. For those looking for an ultraportable for office applications, e-mail, taking notes in a classroom, etc., this is a pretty solid buy. Particularly considering stripped-down netbook is roughly the same price as a Wii.
(Pro tip: order a refurbished unit to get the same warranty and hardware for significantly less money.)
Webcams, bluetooth, Linux OS, and external CD/DVD drives are all available, and Dell is hinting about wireless broadband cards for future models. This doesn’t have the storage or absurd batterly life of the Asus 1000HE, but is significantly lighter (about a pound) and has a smaller footprint.
So yeah, not a bad tinyass computer. Toodles for now.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Phneri, so this is the bundle of joy that you’ve been speaking of! I didn’t know that is was one of those sexy netbooks. You are correct in talking about the air-cards. HP just intro’d their air-card netbook that uses Verizon’s network. But you did much better as HP has yet to get all their quality control kinks worked out. Asus has had some quality control lately as well; However, I still love the brand as they tend to make high end equipment and I love their motherboards. One question that I had was how much hard drive space did the OS (XP I assume rather than Linux) take up? Will try to catch you online soon as Tigger is in St. Louis again and would rather not cry in the corner anymore!
May 18th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I’ll be getting a net book in about a months Time. I’ll be getting the HP 2140, which has a 10.1″ screen and a 160 GB Hard Drive. I would prefer the SSD for it, but that’s just not in my budget right now. The great part about the 2140, is it’s made of aluminum increasing it’s strength and reduces the amount of fingerprints. It also comes with a 6 cell battery for 7-8 hours of life. I would have gotten the Mini 9, but I needed the battery life and the express card slot on the 2140, but nice piece of tech you’ve got there.
May 18th, 2009 at 11:22 am
So, is the hard drive filled up with crazy animal porn yet?
May 18th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Phenri’s desktop wallpaper is him nude at MGC.
May 18th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
100 bucks off an Acer netbook, down to 200, refurb here.
May 18th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
The hard drive is a bit beefy, especially loaded with Dell’s bloatware. I advise anyone concerned with space to do a clean install of xp to clear out that nonsense. As is it’ll sit at around 2-3 gb, depending on how much crap you manually delete.
The aspire is a good deal for what it is. I primarily went with the Dell because I wanted battery life over storage.
And the rest of you are dirty dirty perverts.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
What’s the approximate weight of your new mini baby? And Phneri, the phrase coming to mind is something about the “pot calling the kettle black”. Also, just to clarify, Apoch is referring to himself crying in the corner. I left him alone with the two crazy cats.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
The mini weights in at 2.2 pounds, roughly equivalent to what I leave in the toilet after an evening of cheese and fine wine.
And now you can’t unimagine that picture.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Methinks Phenri has a new desktop wallpaper…
May 19th, 2009 at 8:20 am
My wife just got her Dell Mini 10 last week and she loves it! We tried an Acer Aspire One first and it worked pretty terribly for music playback and video streaming (it was probably a lemon…bought it from Wal-Mart…that was the first mistake…), so opted for the Dell next.
I prefer the 10″ screen to the 9″ one. I think it cuts battery life a bit, but that extra inch of real estate is noticeable. Also, the Dell Mini 10 has a multitouch track pad like MacBooks do, which is kinda neat.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I wish I had a laptop. A tiny one.
I used to turn my PDA into a laptop. Then PDAs got unpopular. Mine crashed a lot. Like, a lot. I stopped using it.