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.