Hi all!
Got one of the new Dell Mini 9 notebooks or netbooks as some call them today. Have had much too little time with it, but wanted to post a review anyway. Here's what I've learned so far...
specs.
I ordered the $449 Windows XP version with 1 gig ram and the 16 gig SSD hard drive. The unit only comes with a 1024x600 screen which is adequate, but I do wish one of the netbook makers would push the limit to 1280x800. It also has a 4 cell battery good for about 3 hours, and the standard port setup of 3 USB, VGA, sound in/out and an ethernet. There is also a slot for an SD card to help out the small SSD hard drive if desired.
What's in the box.
The system came with only a power adapter, which is not more than just a normal looking power brick, so you'll need a plug with room to use it. And, the OS CD, resource CD and Works CD. And, a terse manual and other odd paper work. The power cord is plenty long enough so getting power to it is not hard at all. The power plug is located on the left had side of the unit near the back.
Design.
The design of the Mini 9 is very well done. I have the white version and the paint is very high quality as is the rest of the netbook in general. The keyboard is small, and I'm a bit taken back that it seems it will take a bit to get used to typing on it. I think a little more thought about size and placement of keys would have helped a lot here. Like the key under might right hand pinky is just too small, and the enter key wouldn't have hurt to be a tad smaller to allow this key to be right sized. I'm not sure yet about the function keys mission, but that's not that big of a deal. What is possibly a REAL problem is that if you look at my keyboard picture, there is no F11 or F12. That is very bad considering that the F11 key is used to maximize I.E. and Word among other programs and that might be a very needed thing for this small screen. Other noteworthy things are the battery. Taking a look at the picture with the battery removed shows why there are no function keys. The battery does take up a lot of space in this small package. It is a very nice design if you think about it though. One port I could not identify was the small card slot under the battery, I have it circled in white on the pic of the back with battery removed. It might be a chip card slot for cellular service. My Mini did not have an WWAN options as they are not yet offererd. I did open the access door on the bottom to show the memory slot on the top right, the WLAN card on the bottom right and the SSD drive on the top left. The WWAN port is empty on the bottom left of the picture.
Screen.
The picture I took of the screen is terrible. The screen itself is very nice. It is bright enough to see in just about any condition. I did try it outdoors and could see the screen with no problems at all. The 1024x600 resolution seems just right for the 8.9" screen, but I could stand to see 1280x800 easily if they would just provide it. The main reason I included the screen photo was to show that crapware is alive and well, as the Mini came shipped with much too much loading out of the box.
Keyboard.
It's tiny.
Very tiny.
Small fingers may have no problems. The only problems I had was with the abnormal layout of some keys. The unit does give off some heat during use, but less than a normal laptop, and this heat can be felt through the keyboard.
Touchpad.
The touchpad is designed like most of the new Dell laptops in that it is very nicely integrated with the plastic of the wrist pad. It flows seemlessley between the wrist pad and the touch area making it a dream to use. The reponse of the pad is very accurate, and the side scrolling worked flawlessly.
LEDS.
There are only 2 LED lights on the unit. One for power and one for battery status. Both are VERY BRIGHT, which can be a distraction. Other than that, they work. Not much else to say. The power LED flashes slowly when the unit is in sleep mode.
Webcam.
The webcame software was loaded and ready to go out of the box. I turned off both the normal webcam application and a freebie IM style webcam program that came with the Mini. Both were very annoying and always poped up on first start or returning from sleep. The operation of the webcam is very good, it seems to be the same logitech made webcam in all other Dell notebooks.
Heat and Noise.
The unit does produce a small amount of noticable heat, but nothing to write home about. There is absolutly no noise from the unit at all. I can't find any fans, so the unit appears to be totally passively cooled.
Accesories.
I ordered 2 additional items for my Mini. I got the USB DVD/RW drive and the small carrying pack. The pack was minimal and nice to look at, but odd to operate. Not sure I'd recommend this pack unless you just have to have something to carry the unit in, like I did. The USB DVD/RW drive is nothing special. Just a normal laptop drive put in a case and USB port added. You could use any similar drive if you find a better price elsewhere.
Benchmarks.
I've not yet had time to run a LOT of benchmarks. First, PCMark failed to run at all, so nothing is reportable there. HD Tune did run, here's it's results:
Min: 3.6 MB/sec
Max: 64 MB/sec
Ave: 62.2 MB/sec
Access: 0.4ms
Burst: 45.1 MB/sec (!!!!)
CPU Usage 8.2%
I also ran Super PI and got a 512K run in 3m and 29s, for what that's worth.
Pros:
This netbook meets all my expectations. It's size/weight and capabilities are right on the money. But not at first, I'll cover why in the Cons... The keyboard will take getting used to, but works well for it's size. The system, after tweaking, seems to run exactly as you'd expect a 1.6 Ghz Celeron based machine to run today. So not great, but as bad as you might think. Last, "it's cute" is what I hear everyone say when I show the Mini to them. It's hard to not admit, it is very cute.
Cons:
First, the missing F11 and F12 may be a killer to some. The worst thing about this unit so far though was the SSD Hard Drive. The first time I turned on the unit it took over 5 mins to boot up. I just about called Dell to inquire about sending it back it was so slow. Access to the computer didn't get much better. Then I figured out the problem, Windows was shipped with the full drive C: set to compress everything. BAD! This slowed the system down to a crawl. As shipped, the 16 gig drive measure actually about 14.3 Gig of which almost 4 gig was used by the OS and applications installed leaving about 11 Gig free. I turned off compression and lost only about 1 gig, so I can't figure out why they'd hobble the system in this way. It took about 1 hour to complete the switch off of compression. The system became extremely usable and much nicer one the compression was turned off. Bad move Dell. After installing my own AV, and Open Office and a few other nicknacks I still have 8 Gig free for anything I need. SD port access also seems a bit slow, but that may be the card I'm using. Overall I think the basic slow speed of the SSD may be the worst bottle neck. But fortunately it seems easy to replace this part when better devices start hitting the market. I'm waiting for a 64 Gig SSD that's much faster
Overall I'm very pleased with this netbook. It doesn't suffer any more problems than any other sub-mini book on the market, and is very well built. An acid test is going to happen tommorrow as my wife has already swiped it to try at her all-day meeting tomorrow to see how well it fairs in real-world use for note taking and true business tasks. I'll let you guys know what she thinks after that.
Got one of the new Dell Mini 9 notebooks or netbooks as some call them today. Have had much too little time with it, but wanted to post a review anyway. Here's what I've learned so far...
specs.
I ordered the $449 Windows XP version with 1 gig ram and the 16 gig SSD hard drive. The unit only comes with a 1024x600 screen which is adequate, but I do wish one of the netbook makers would push the limit to 1280x800. It also has a 4 cell battery good for about 3 hours, and the standard port setup of 3 USB, VGA, sound in/out and an ethernet. There is also a slot for an SD card to help out the small SSD hard drive if desired.
What's in the box.
The system came with only a power adapter, which is not more than just a normal looking power brick, so you'll need a plug with room to use it. And, the OS CD, resource CD and Works CD. And, a terse manual and other odd paper work. The power cord is plenty long enough so getting power to it is not hard at all. The power plug is located on the left had side of the unit near the back.
Design.
The design of the Mini 9 is very well done. I have the white version and the paint is very high quality as is the rest of the netbook in general. The keyboard is small, and I'm a bit taken back that it seems it will take a bit to get used to typing on it. I think a little more thought about size and placement of keys would have helped a lot here. Like the key under might right hand pinky is just too small, and the enter key wouldn't have hurt to be a tad smaller to allow this key to be right sized. I'm not sure yet about the function keys mission, but that's not that big of a deal. What is possibly a REAL problem is that if you look at my keyboard picture, there is no F11 or F12. That is very bad considering that the F11 key is used to maximize I.E. and Word among other programs and that might be a very needed thing for this small screen. Other noteworthy things are the battery. Taking a look at the picture with the battery removed shows why there are no function keys. The battery does take up a lot of space in this small package. It is a very nice design if you think about it though. One port I could not identify was the small card slot under the battery, I have it circled in white on the pic of the back with battery removed. It might be a chip card slot for cellular service. My Mini did not have an WWAN options as they are not yet offererd. I did open the access door on the bottom to show the memory slot on the top right, the WLAN card on the bottom right and the SSD drive on the top left. The WWAN port is empty on the bottom left of the picture.
Screen.
The picture I took of the screen is terrible. The screen itself is very nice. It is bright enough to see in just about any condition. I did try it outdoors and could see the screen with no problems at all. The 1024x600 resolution seems just right for the 8.9" screen, but I could stand to see 1280x800 easily if they would just provide it. The main reason I included the screen photo was to show that crapware is alive and well, as the Mini came shipped with much too much loading out of the box.
Keyboard.
It's tiny.
Very tiny.
Small fingers may have no problems. The only problems I had was with the abnormal layout of some keys. The unit does give off some heat during use, but less than a normal laptop, and this heat can be felt through the keyboard.
Touchpad.
The touchpad is designed like most of the new Dell laptops in that it is very nicely integrated with the plastic of the wrist pad. It flows seemlessley between the wrist pad and the touch area making it a dream to use. The reponse of the pad is very accurate, and the side scrolling worked flawlessly.
LEDS.
There are only 2 LED lights on the unit. One for power and one for battery status. Both are VERY BRIGHT, which can be a distraction. Other than that, they work. Not much else to say. The power LED flashes slowly when the unit is in sleep mode.
Webcam.
The webcame software was loaded and ready to go out of the box. I turned off both the normal webcam application and a freebie IM style webcam program that came with the Mini. Both were very annoying and always poped up on first start or returning from sleep. The operation of the webcam is very good, it seems to be the same logitech made webcam in all other Dell notebooks.
Heat and Noise.
The unit does produce a small amount of noticable heat, but nothing to write home about. There is absolutly no noise from the unit at all. I can't find any fans, so the unit appears to be totally passively cooled.
Accesories.
I ordered 2 additional items for my Mini. I got the USB DVD/RW drive and the small carrying pack. The pack was minimal and nice to look at, but odd to operate. Not sure I'd recommend this pack unless you just have to have something to carry the unit in, like I did. The USB DVD/RW drive is nothing special. Just a normal laptop drive put in a case and USB port added. You could use any similar drive if you find a better price elsewhere.
Benchmarks.
I've not yet had time to run a LOT of benchmarks. First, PCMark failed to run at all, so nothing is reportable there. HD Tune did run, here's it's results:
Min: 3.6 MB/sec
Max: 64 MB/sec
Ave: 62.2 MB/sec
Access: 0.4ms
Burst: 45.1 MB/sec (!!!!)
CPU Usage 8.2%
I also ran Super PI and got a 512K run in 3m and 29s, for what that's worth.
Pros:
This netbook meets all my expectations. It's size/weight and capabilities are right on the money. But not at first, I'll cover why in the Cons... The keyboard will take getting used to, but works well for it's size. The system, after tweaking, seems to run exactly as you'd expect a 1.6 Ghz Celeron based machine to run today. So not great, but as bad as you might think. Last, "it's cute" is what I hear everyone say when I show the Mini to them. It's hard to not admit, it is very cute.
Cons:
First, the missing F11 and F12 may be a killer to some. The worst thing about this unit so far though was the SSD Hard Drive. The first time I turned on the unit it took over 5 mins to boot up. I just about called Dell to inquire about sending it back it was so slow. Access to the computer didn't get much better. Then I figured out the problem, Windows was shipped with the full drive C: set to compress everything. BAD! This slowed the system down to a crawl. As shipped, the 16 gig drive measure actually about 14.3 Gig of which almost 4 gig was used by the OS and applications installed leaving about 11 Gig free. I turned off compression and lost only about 1 gig, so I can't figure out why they'd hobble the system in this way. It took about 1 hour to complete the switch off of compression. The system became extremely usable and much nicer one the compression was turned off. Bad move Dell. After installing my own AV, and Open Office and a few other nicknacks I still have 8 Gig free for anything I need. SD port access also seems a bit slow, but that may be the card I'm using. Overall I think the basic slow speed of the SSD may be the worst bottle neck. But fortunately it seems easy to replace this part when better devices start hitting the market. I'm waiting for a 64 Gig SSD that's much faster
Overall I'm very pleased with this netbook. It doesn't suffer any more problems than any other sub-mini book on the market, and is very well built. An acid test is going to happen tommorrow as my wife has already swiped it to try at her all-day meeting tomorrow to see how well it fairs in real-world use for note taking and true business tasks. I'll let you guys know what she thinks after that.
