Comments on: Hands-on with the Dell Inspiron Mini 9

There aren't many surprises--leaks had revealed the system's design and features--but it's still exciting to see a major player back the Netbook concept in a big way.

[40list04]

I take it from the description that it doesn't even have a modem. That is a real deal breaker for me since places I go frequently absolutely demand dial-up access. It would be good to ditch my boat anchor weight antique notebook and start carrying a tiny inexpensive device like this but until they make one that actually does the minimum that I require it just isn't going to happen. I can do without optical drives and many other features but connectivity is not negotiable.

[dragonbite]

These days, with USB just about anything can be added.

[BenHD]

Yeah, that's ridiculous that it doesn't have a modem. I was also was hoping for at least 2 PS/2 ports and a floppy drive.

[hankdennemann]

I was really hoping for a serial port. How can any company call itself a "computer" manufacturer when its products lack this simple, decades-obsolete interface that at least tens of people still use nationwide? Ridiculous...

[robstak]

hahaha nice... lol.

[irondonkey]

The 80's called, they want their interfaces back.

[zip22]

you can get usb modems.

The price of the inspiron is really disappointing. I wish they would have hit the rumored price of $299. For $349, I can pick up an Aspire with 1GB ram, 120GB harddrive, Windows XP, and a 0.3 MP webcam compared to 512MB ram, 4GB SSD, Ubuntu, and no webcam on the inspiron.

I really don't mind the lack of the f-keys or the small storage of the SSD, but the lack of RAM, the webcam, and windows XP at $349 is disappointing. Maybe there will be some coupons that can hit the price eventually, but instead of making a splash with a nicely speced netbook at an impulsive price, Dell has placed themselves near the bottom of the pack spec wise and has priced themselves too high. I have been ready to buy the inspiron mini, but this has fallen short of my expectations.

[scottwilkins]

Where can you get the Acer for the price you posted?

[traffic_guy]

I tried the Eee that a friend had and found the keyboard to be too small for my large hands which made typing other than 2 finger hunt-n-peck almost impossible. That along with the short battery life was a deal-breaker for me. I need to be able to type comfortably and have a battery life of 2+ hours to make it a device I would consider. So if the keyboard configuration makes typing easier and the battery life is as reported, this might be a good solution.

[LogicProphet]

Wow seems like I'm the only one impressed so far. This is gonna give the 901 competition, better keyboard, 16gigs of hard drive space vs 12, if you add blue-tooth and 1.3 mega pixel web cam it still comes out $479 vs $599 for the 901,and the battery life should be decent seeing as its a 4 cell. Still I'm going to wait for the reviews wonder if it takes SDHC

[rbannon]

Please take a look at the Acer Aspire One before buying this UMPC from Dell. The Acer is $350 (Windows XP, 1 GB RAM, and 120 GB HD) and has better build quality than you might expect.

[scottwilkins]

The Acer Aspire One with XP, 1 gig, 120 Gig hd is $500, not $350. Same price as the Dell with similar except 16 Gig SSD which is prefered for reliability. I'm sure Dell with come out with a spindle HD version soon.

[peteyboy84]

Really everything you basically need. And, why would anyone still require PS/2 ports or floppy drives? Obsolete.

[mclipbalm]

peteyboy84:

Umm... I'm pretty sure BenHD was joking. He was lumping modems in with other older technologies like PS/2 ports and floppies. And I agree; a modem would be a waste of space on this device. If you must have a modem, there are plenty of USB options. U.S. Robotics (just one example) makes an excellent controller-based USB modem that works on any platform. The rest of us will enjoy having one less dust-collecting hole on the side of our mini-note.

[micite]

How exactly are these netbooks better than a 11"-13" notebook? They're just cheaper and that's because they're lacking in many features. Also at 8.9"-10.2", they're not pocket sized so you still have to carry them in a satchel/briefcase, so why not do that already with a proper lightweight notebook.

[garychi002]

If you have to ask, you really don't understand. :)
Also: They shouldn't just take reviews on these devices from people who don't really know how to USE a touchpad.

[ComDive]

The difference is WEIGHT - A "lightweight" notebook will weigh twice as much as a Mini 9.
A 10" Eee weighs half again as much and with a shorter running battery.

[goobersnotch]

The Acer's touchpad was a deal breaker for me. I had a hard time using it due to the buttons being located on the left and right of the touchpad instead of the more natural location of being below the touchpad. It was very difficult to use it with one hand and having to position my thumb on its side to left click and still control the cursor at the same time. So I opted for the slightly more expensive Dell instead.

[garychi002]

Having used touchpads for years, experience taught me that Synaptics is highly preferable to the ALPS/Cirque designs and software. REAL touchpad users rarely use the buttons at all. The Synaptics software has "nuance" modes that all you to do it ALL by tapping or sliding around the pad itself. The buttons are there pretty much for novices (or non-touchpad-savvy users).

[jscott418]

I have ordered a Lenovo S10 with 80gb HD and a bigger screen 10.2". The Dell is not a good deal at the price. With such small SSD's it lacks the ability to add much software to it. The Lenovo even has a PC card slot for a Cell card. I am not bragging up Lenovo but Dell really handicapped the Mini 9.

[scottwilkins]

I have not seen any Acer netbook for $349 with XP on it. All the decent shops have this config for way over $500, which is similar to the Dell pricing with XP, 1gig and 16gig SSD. Given that, the Dell seems much much more upgradable than the Acer. I'm getting a Dell on this purchase. Sorry, the Acer doesn't cut it.

[hotmail123]

I already have 2 laptops (15.4" Centrino Hitachi + 14" AMD HP), but decided to jump on the UMPC wagon & get myself a new Acer netbook. I just bought a 120GB Acer Aspireone CPU 1GB ram with XP on it for C$369 (US$347). It is really a great XP laptop and I have nothing but good things to say about it.

[zip22]

scott, bestbuy has it for that price.

[RonTenny]

Very interested in Mini-like computers but I think for now the Acer is a hit in this range. Their full size laptops are top of the line as our company used many and almost NO trouble.

[Phil Scarbrough]

Does anyone know if the Mini 9 can read SDHC cards? If so, I think i will buy one. If not, i think I will get the eee pc 901.
Why didn't Dell come out with a 6 cell battery?

[heffay111]

I ordered mine two weeks ago and it arrives tomorrow. I checked with Dell support chat before ordering and according to them it can read SDHC cards. I ordered a $65 16gb SDHC card for it, so it had better work.

[grommit168]

Dan, would you be able to post load times (videos even better) of common windows tasks such as opening a word doc or openoffice doc, opening a web browser and saving a file/image. Possibly, a video showing usage speeds of surfing the internet (demonstrate any lags)... Many thanks.

Kind regards,
g

[gmatyas]

I too have been holding back pending the Dell release. I also am disapointed, mostly by the price. So close on battery, 6 cell please. The 901 12 gig is really 4+8, two seperate SSD's. The smaller and faster is for the OS, but others have reported issues with running out of disk space. Is the Dell 16 gig on a single SSD? No built in mic? Why offer a web cam without a built in mic. It is a good looking design. I wish HP would do a refresh of their 2113.

[logiotek]

I ordered mine but won't receive it until the end of this month. When it arrives, I will post here again with more hands-on info. I really did my homework before stopping at Mini Inspiron from Dell. Decision factors for me were: 1) 8.9" form factor - 10 is a little too big for my taste because I already use 12 3-pound laptop as a main laptop, there was not many 8.9's to choose from but let me explain why I decided to go with Dell, 2) decent keyboard layout and great touchpad, keyboard maybe not as great as on Aspire One but better than Eee 900/901 for sure, how often do you use F1~F10 keys anyway to complain, 3) by far the easiest access to all upgradable components of all netbooks - you have access to RAM, SSD, WLAN, WWAN cards all under one cover (and even has preinstalled antennas for WWAN although no option to purchase a WWAN card yet but they are Dell, if they made space for it, they will have it for sale soon), 4) superior deisgn and outstanding build quality, this netbook dissected looks more solid on the inside than any competition, that's for sure, 5) 4-cell battery that doesn't stick out and allows for nearly 4 hours of normal use without any conservations, 6) rumors that production models will feature PCIe mini card SSDs with higher performance than competition and even if not, a simple upgrade of $179.99 from www.mydigitaldiscount.com will fix that (I'm talking about SSDs that read 40 MB/s and write 25 MB/s vs default Aspire One SSD that rates @ 20 MB/s reads and 10 MB/s writes)

I hope this helps. Update will be coming soon. Best regards!

[logiotek]

Oh almost forgot, there IS a digital array MIC too, it's located on/near the webcam . Pfft, this is the best 8.9" netbook out there, no doubt. Sure you will feel it a little more in the bank but would you rather have something that's functional OR something that is just an incomplete piece of engineering? Ask yourself that... (And by the way I am an engineer.)

[garychi002]

...With an opinion. We have to respect that.
-gc

[logiotek]

Well I got my Mini Inspiron and it was everything I expected except the fact that WWAN Mini PCI-e socket is not soldered onto the motherboard and antennas are not installed. I wasn't planning to use WWAN on it anyway so it's not really a problem for me. Dell will have WWAN options in the future and there is certainly space for it under the hood of Mini Inspiron. I ordered top model and it only came out to $514 with taxes and S&H charges. The 16 GB versions have higher speed STEC SSD rated at 80 MB/s reads and 25 MB/s writes. It isn't a bottleneck on Win XP system at all even without any netbook specific optimization. In fact I installed Win XP Pro from scratch onto it and it flies compared to my friend's Aspire One 8 GB SSD (rated 38 MB/s reads and 10 MB/s writes). Keyboard is easy to get used to and typing on it is not tough at all for medium sized hands. Touchpad is awesome. I haven't really tested quality of sound/mic/webcam yet. Wireless works great and I haven't tested bluetooth yet. Dell system software and onscreen display are good. I haven't tested the battery life yet either. I expect between 3 and 4 hours of run time with WiFi on and moderate load. System is super quiet (no moving parts, duh). I replaced the stock 1 GB RAM module with 2 GB Kingston one and the system accepted it without problems. I will be installing more software onto it and customizing and optimizing Win XP for my taste. I didn't play around too much with stock Win XP Home it came with, but I know it comes with drive compression enabled to get you more space and probably slow things down a bit too. Disabling the drive compression should speed up the system although it runs perfectly fine with it enabled. Dell definitely know what they are doing. However people are confirming that 4 and 8 GB version of SSD on Mini Inspiron are the same slow SSDs that are in Aspire One. Only the 16 GB is a faster STEC SSD. Also what is a bit annoying to me is there is no SSD activity LED. I will post more later. I hope this helps for now.

[logiotek]

OK I finally had more time to spend with my Mini Inspiron. Actually, I am now typing this post from it. To recap, as soon as I got my Mini, I popped the hood and installed 2 GB memory module from Kingston. System recognized it without any problems. After that I reinstalled OS to Win XP Pro with SP3 and installed all my software and did a few common sense tweaks. Like it's already known 16 GB SSD version is from STEC and it literally flies on Win XP. I got a chance to look at all the peripherals Mini has in more detail. The only thing that I haven't tested is the external mic connector. WiFi works perfect, I tested it with at least 3 different hotspots with different security profiles. Bluetooth works great, I was able to establish file browsing the Verizon LG enV file system without any special software using OBEX objects as well as use it as Bluetooth modem. If your phone supports 3G you won't need a WWAN card, duh. Built-in mic and webcam are impressive, I tested it with Skype and Yahoo - sound quality is great and so are the images. I also did 2 battery discharge tests from 99% charge capacity. During the tests I was playing MP3s non-stop through head phones as well as browsing web pages through WiFi. Brightness was set to 2 clicks up from the lowest setting - enough for me as the screen is really bright. Both times, after 3 hours of described continuous use battery was in low teens (11% first test, 13% second test). I am really happy with my Mini and I am glad I got the highest configured model mainly because of SSD performance. Dell definitely know what they are doing. I like keyboard as well, as you can see I'm already used to it. Mini will be replacing my Latitude D420 as a main laptop.

[cgbishop]

I just received my mini and have seen on several blogs and websites that the RAM can be increased to 2 GB. When I asked Dell via instant support chat they told me that the mini would not recognize the 2 GB RAM. While I was told that it would not damage my mini, I do not want to waste money on memory I cannot use. Any advice?

[logiotek]

It's been a while since I checked this topic. I already have been using my Mini for a month and I absolutely love it. There is no harm in upgrading RAM, what Dell techs are saying is wrong and out of their lack of knowledge. Their job is to read from the spec sheets of their products. RAM recognition depends on chipset and BIOS. That chipset supports up to 2 GB of RAM. As long as you get any 1.8V 200-pin DDR2 SD-RAM module at 533, 667, or 800 effective data rate it will be fine. Data rate doesn't really matter as it would get under-clocked anyway. I use Kingston DDR2-667 in mine and I haven't had problems at all. I use my Mini as a complete replacement of my main laptop. I sold my Latitude D420 already. I use it at least 12 hours each day and it never gave me any problems.

I recommend using this guide to optimize responsiveness of the system: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=37047

There are also alternate SSDs already for sale for the Mini ranging up to 64GB in capacity: http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/CategoryProductList.jsp?cat=Browse+By+Brand%3AMyDigitalSSD%3AMyDigitalSSD+PCI+Express+PCI-e+SSDs:Dell+Inspiron+Mini+9+PCI-e+SSDs

Anyway Dell Mini Inspiron rocks! =D I am in love with it. The best laptop I ever owned and I usually go through at least 3 laptops per year.

[14tihaar]

The information you have provided is very helpful and much appreciated. I just ordered the 2GB RAM today. Do you have to reinstall all the software after upgrading the RAM?

[logiotek]

No not after upgrading RAM, you don't need to reinstall anything. =)

[ComDive]

Where the 2 GB RAM problem comes in is with the Ubuntu OS; I forget the specifics but the max Ubuntu will see is 1GB.
XP does fine recognizing the 2GB.
As with anything, things are subject to change at the drop of a hat.