Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Review

I do not know if I should envy you for having access to all the new/hot stuff months or weeks beforehand or sympathize when you cannot call a friend and tell him : Hey! you will not believe what xxx will announce in x weeks!



And tnx for answering my question!

 

That keyboard disturbs me. Look at the offset between the Q and the A key below it....

 

By the way, I can't wait until the folks at Sony come up with for their VAIO netbook.

 

No moving parts = complete silence and reliability. That's amazing!

 

I wasn't aware that Sony was working on a netbook?

As for the Mini 9, I think I'll wait for Dell to release their Mini 10 in October.

 

Yea and I hope the Mini 10 has Intel's new graphics chip with hardware video decoding and less heat/power consumption. The 945g sucks.

 

Was rumored months ago, has yet to show up.

 

Anything from Sony will not be cheap. I will not count on their netbook offering at all. For netbook, price is very important, and brand name is the last thing for me to consider. That's why we see so many unfamiliar brands in the market right now.

So far, for all the Atom N270 netbooks in the market or going to roll out soon, I think Acer Aspire One is the winner. It hits the right spot in terms of price, features and design. Unfortunately, for those who can wait, I will not recommend you to rush out and buy the current crops of netbooks. There are just too many things to compromise.

For me, here is what I want for a $400 netbook:
Dual core Atom CPU
1280x720 10" LCD with LED backlit. Come on, this is something very achievable in the current form factor, no need to increase the overall size of the body. Plus, I was told LED backlit can reduce the thickness of the panel, but so far, I don't see any size difference between regular LCD and LED backlit screen. Time to shed a few millimeter on the panel. 1024x600 is not good for some web site. 600 vertical pixels is not enough for those Flash based web site, and even for some Windows pop up screen.
Fanless or near silent fan. This is a main problem for those HDD based netbook, and Acer did a poor job here.
A conventional touchpad with two dedicated buttons. No need to re-invent the wheel here.
User replaceable RAM module. No soldering module please. 1GB for base model, and upgradeable to 2GB by user.
For $400, 16GB SSD is probably the best I can ask for, at least in the next six months. And 16GB is just not enough. So HDD is still a viable option, and so 160GB is not that much to ask for.
A true keyboard with dedicated function keys.
I don't care how many cells in the battery, I need at least 5 hours of battery life.
One eSATA/USB combo port.
$20 optional bluetooth. Plus all other standard features, like USB, AV ports, card readers, ethernet, etc.

 

Nothing beats the Asus EEE PC901 for battery life...

The EEE seems like good value with 20GB SSD (linux version).

 

Wow. It looks great.

 

Good spot!! I can't believe nobody else has noticed it. I'd have thought this would be a real problem, especially for touch typists.

I'd really like to hear the views of someone who has used the keyboard.

 

Overall I think the Mini 9 looks good but it's not quite as good of a value as I'd hoped it would be. Wasn't the starting price supposed to be $300?

 

i was hoping for something better from Dell. Lenovo has the best netbook according to me..

 

I guess this is the biggest misconception about this whole mini release... Dell never did once say that they where going to price the Inspiron Mini 9 at $299. So I am not sure why people keep repeating that was the price it should be...

Whereas, Asus when they first announced they were going to release a netbook they said they would release it at a $199 price point... which never happened... so in that instance people have something to cry foul over...

 

That's pretty sweet, but I'd go for a larger battery, for sure. Also, I like my Vostro keyboard...

 

I hope they will have the $99 deal again or something similar when the poulsbo version comes out.

 

Do we know how the SSD drive is setup? Is it similar to EEE's where you get a 4GB SSD onboard plus a mini PCI-E for the rest or do we get a full 4,8,and 16GB SSD drive?

 

It was released with a 4-cell battery which leads me to believe the extended battery will be an 8-cell. That's in line with Dell's '8-9 hours' battery life they've mentioned.

 

I'm not sure how they would extend the battery with a larger pack. The screen folds down the back of the unit so it can't stick out. I guess they could extend the pack another layer down, but that would make it sit funny on a table.

 

I think the whole thing with the $299 price point is that that was originally one of the goals for the Eee, but the 2G Surf ended up leaving a lot to be desired, what with the soldered parts and such.

I, too, was hoping for a $299 price point. I guess when you're talking about laptops, $50 doesn't seem like a lot of money but for me, after having just recently purchased a new laptop and having to start the new college semester and pay for books/tuition, $50 ends up being A LOT of money.

I really like what I see with the Mini 9 and I think I'm gonna try and figure a way to swing the cash and pick one up but I might be out of luck.

 

The screen reminds me of axim x51 series PDA. Price looks okay with discounted price, but not at regular prices. I still like lenovo netbook better because of the larger screen. Larger capacity battery compared to other manufacturers are nice on dell's mini, but still not satisfiable for me. I'll probably wait till they start using more energy efficient chipsets.

Looking at the keyboard photo again (keys Q. A. Z not straight) I wonder how that would type like.

 

Pretty slick what Dell is doing.$99 for one of these with a purchase of a regular laptop sounds great.Thats a $250 difference...same as all these $250 or equivalent coupons thats they always have floating around.I highly doubt you can get this deal w/ a coupon.I may consider getting in on this if it's allowed.

 

I found this Mini 9-related interview very interesting and elucidating as to some of the design choices made with the Mini 9.

To sum up, Dell's attitude is explicitly along the lines of "this will not, and cannot, be your primary laptop." A recurring theme in the interview is that the Mini 9 is intended for casual and short-term use. Sure, this is the party line with existing netbooks, but it's a totally stupid party line. The winner in this particular race is going to be the company that develops a reasonably priced product that can deliver the goods as a primary mobile solution rather than a supplemental one. The days of six-pound laptops are over now, and it's time for the big dogs to come to terms with that instead of finding sneaky ways to stall the mobility revolution.

In the context of this interview, it seems to me that some of the issues with the Mini 9 - specifically, the absurdly awkward keyboard - may have been borderline malicious choices made out of a desire to cripple the netbook, limit its usefulness, and push it into supplemental-hardware-for-the-privileged territory. Making the function keys into "real", combo-stroke Fn-keys in the middle of the keyboard eliminates the power users; the layout just looks positively dreadful. (And what's with everyone but Acer missing the boat on discrete, no-Fn-required PgUp / PgDn keys?)

Elsewhere in this interview, it's pretty clear that they just don't get what people really want. Most of us would certainly take the option of a six- or eight-cell extended battery at the expense of another half pound, but they don't seem to be interested in that either.

Let's face it, the SSDs on these things are a joke in terms of performance, and while I thought the SSD was a good idea when I got my EEE 701, I quickly tired of the resultant slowdown. Folks with SSD-based Aspire Ones are faring little better, and the benchmarks for the Mini 9's SSD in this review are worrisome too. Not offering a hard drive option is yet another way that Dell can convince you to buy another "proper" laptop on top of the Mini 9.

I like the fact that the 9 is a fanless design, but I'm simply not going to invest in what is obviously willfully crippled hardware. The first company that can sell me the machine I've known they could sell me all along - a 3-pounder with Atom, a real hard drive, a usable screen, a usable keyboard, 6 hours or more of battery life, ready availability, AND a reasonable price - gets my business and loyalty.

Right now, Acer and Lenovo are the only possibilities I can take seriously, provided that Acer actually delivers on their $400 6-cell version of the One, and Lenovo still has another month to botch it just as almost everyone else has at this point.

 

Embarassing that it has more USB ports than the m1330!

 

does anyone know if it comes with the 3g wwan card or do u have to aquire it .

 

It does NOT come with a 3G WWAN card ... regardless of what a few other idiots on other sites are saying. Trust us, we've spoken to Dell about this. There is a card slot were a 3G WWAN card can be inserted at a later date, and Dell may offer this option at additional cost later ... but the Mini 9 does NOT have a 3G WWAN card.

I really hope the fools who are saying it does over on other sites get called out on this.

 

Thanks for the great and thorough review!

If I buy this fairly soon, I want to order the Ubuntu version with the minimum configuration of 512mb/4GB and perhaps have everything upgraded in a year or so. The only thing I would add at time of order is the Bluetooth, I think. A question: as a Linux newbie, and someone who is not that knowledgeable about hardware, does the entry-level configuration actually work well enough or is it too much of a compromise? I would be using it mostly as a mobile writing machine (using Open Office Writer) and light websurfing on a daily basis and when traveling to upload photos and blog, websurfing, watch videos, etc. I generally don't keep a lot of stuff on a laptop except temporarily storing a document or two that I'm working on--I usually work off SD cards and thumb drives for media.

The only piece of software that the 9 seems to be missing to be a pretty complete mobile system for my purposes is the GIMP, which I have been using for a few years with XP on my laptop and PC. Is it realistic to be able to expect to install the GIMP on the 512mb/4GB configuration and have it work reasonably well for light usage?

I'm not scared of Linux, in fact I'm intrigued by it.

 

No, it's not reasonable to expect to use GIMP reasonably well on 512mb/4GB Ubuntu (or any other OS) box. You will want 2GB and more space.

 

Not to over analyze the subject, but what was it you were trying to install? Having set up Ubuntu for others I've found that once they know how to use Add/Remove Applications (and understand that FOSS software is free and plentiful) they're pretty much set; the few exceptions to this (eg. Skype, Amazon MP3) are available as .debs you just double-click on. Thus none of my users have needed the command line to install apps, so I'm curious about what you needed that required this.

 

What prevents a manufacturer from producing a 12" laptop w/ full keyboard at the $400-$500 level?

 

It seems like 8.9inch is sort of a niche right now. Dell does have plans for a Dell E-Slim, probably called the Inspiron Mini 12 now if you follow their new naming convention, that is a 12 inch Atom based netbook. There are also confirmed plans for a 10 inch version in October. Take confirmed with a grain of salt of course.

 

This DELL is almost exactly what I want. I have a PC and a laptop right now and I don't take the laptop anywhere, it's too much trouble to lug around. Probably sell the laptop if I get the mini 9.

I want to take this baby on trips and upload pictures, email, watch media, journal, and internet.
No moving part, that's awesome!
It looks like it'll be easy to upgrade too, so in a year or two I can pop in a 64G SSD, yeah!

function keys - I almost never use them.

It would be perfect if it has
- 10' screen with 780 vertical lines
- 1GB RAM
- 8GB SSD, actually 4 is ok for now, upgrade later.
$399

 

I ordered one this afternoon with the bluetooth and 1.3MP webcam option.

Page 40 of the setup guide http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins910/en/sg/M770HA00MR.pdf states that the Dell Mini 9 or Dell 910 takes 533, 677 or 800Mhz of RAM of DDR2 RAM.

Laptop MAG added a 2GB stick of PC5300 (677MHz) RAM. http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/dell-mini-ram.aspx

Does anyone know if a 2GB stick of 800MHz (PC6400) will work? Like this one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134587

I'm also trying to find if anyone sells the 16GB Mini-PCI card SSD (made by STEC) so I can put another 16GB SSD and increase the space to 32GB. It has a free Mini-PCI slot available. I could just get a 16GB SDHC card and be happy, I guess.

 

Any 10" screen they use would use the same WSVGA resolution as the 8.9" screen.

 

I have a 2GB DDR2-800 ram stick in my EEE 901 (which uses the same chipset and processor) and it runs fine.

 

I disagree that it is fair. It is misleading.

The console doesn't have to be used at all to install software, although it is an option. All software in Ubuntu can be installed using Synaptic (point and click) or downloading a .deb package and clicking through the installation.

You can install MS Windows software using the console, but you don't have to.

 

"sudo dash" WHEN THE HELL DO YOU HAVE TO USE THAT?!?!?!?!
"apt-get" WHEN THE HELL?!?!?!?
You dont need to use that in any version of Ubuntu, or even Debian!

I'm sorry but I'm just not sure where you got any of this...
Linux isn't Windows, you do things differently, but its not like you do a lot or any terminal work....

 

Hehe. Calm down Thomas or you will be banned.

 

You're funny.

 

Oh Am I?
Linux isn't my main OS, but I use it enough to know that most distros(Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Mandriva, etc.) require NO terminal work at all.

 

Depends on your hardware. If I were to reinstall Ubuntu on my laptop, I'd still need to use the CLI to install wireless drivers as I needed to two years ago.

 

I have one of the crappiest wireless cards as far as linux support goes(stupid Broadcom wont release anything to make drivers, but now there are some).
I just install b43-fwcutter via synaptic.
Wooh! Wireless!

 

Yep's sure am ^^^^Which....would prob's mean November as a projected release date...

Cin

 

I think people expected this unit to cost $299 because they read the leaked Dell information. In one of the pictures, it was explicitly stated that it will 'start at $299.'

Link is below:
http://www.engadget.com/photos/dell...king-on-eee-and-air-in-one-fell-swoop/859926/

 

I disagree wholeheartly. Get real, the viewing angles are terrible. This is the sole reason I will never buy another Dell for mulitmedia purposes again. The colors wash out as soon as you move one millimeter above or below, left or right of the perfect viewing angle. You will never get vibrant colors on it because either the reflections, the glare or the angle you are looking at it will never be perfect.

 

That kind of incorrect "price targeting" is common with internal confidential documents for many companies ... and is why companies try VERY, VERY hard to prevent these confidential documents from leaking out.

When you first start the development process you give the designers something to shoot for, and the designers put together initial prototypes and parts lists and your team creates estimated MSRPs ... but the final "true" MSRP isn't determined until later after various departments take a look at the bottom line for production and determine the margins based on estimated number of sales.

This is the same with notebook accessories as well as notebooks. For example, "Company A" might develop a new laptop bag with an initial price target of $59.99 ... but after development (and finding ways to include innovative features that make their bag better than the competition) they realize stores need to sell the bag for $99.99 (based on previous sales numbers) in order to make an acceptable profit.

If sales of the new laptop bag go through the roof and the company sells huge numbers then they can always lower the price to resellers (stores) which in theory drops the street price ... maybe even down to the original $59.99 price target.

For example, when ASUS launched the original Eee PC 4G (701) and it sold for $399 I was told the initial reseller margins in the US were EXTREMELY low ... as in stores made LESS than $20 per Eee PC sold. That's why many stores tried to sell the Eee PC for more than $399 when it first came out (and why the price of the original Eee PC still hasn't dropped much in retail stores that still carry it).

If the margins at the time of launch were that thin at $399, can you imagine the kind of loss ASUS and the resellers would have taken if the Eee PC 4G sold for $249 or $299 at launch?

My point is that early pre-production internal documents often list price targets that are completely unrealistic.

On one hand, I enjoy reading "leaked" information about upcoming products, but these types of leaks usually just hurt the companies involved because consumers develop incorrect expectations based on preliminary data that wasn't meant for consumers (or anyone outside the company) to see.

 

Can it detect or install 1x2GB of ram ? does it run on 64 bit for window xp ?
Does it have built in microphone ?
Does the touchpad have scrolling horizontally and vertical ?

 

Per one of my earlier posts in this thread, you can put a 2GB RAM module inside this netbook ... but ONLY Windows (or a different installation of Linux) will be able to use 2GB. The customized Ubuntu Linux from Dell will not recognize more than 1GB of RAM.

Although the Atom processor is technically a 64-bit processor I do not believe the notebook versions of the Atom processors support 64-bit OS at this time.

Yes, the Mini 9 has a built-in microphone for web chat.

The touchpad in our pre-production model is a Synaptics touchpad with both horizontal and vertical customizable scroll zones (only the vertical was set in the software by default in our pre-production model).

 

Thank you very much JerryJ.
About the touchpad , which it means it can be customize ? I was worry looking at the picture where it doesn't have any vertical or horizontal scroll http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/36302.jpg compare to other touchpad on studio 15 http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/35171.jpg

There a few more thing i'd like to know whether the mini 9 able to install window Vista and support Aero ?
Is it possible watching HD content or .mkv file format ?

 

Jerry, do you know what brand of SSD is in the Mini? Thanks.