I got a Dell mini 9 for two weeks recently (How and why is out of the question. I will keep it a mystery (soon to be demystified though) for now:)). But I absolutely loved it. Its excellent for traveling, extremely light and durable. I love the preinstalled Ubuntu (thank god for Dell for having all the drivers and also packing it up in a CD. Getting them into the machine in case of a reinstall however is tricky since the mini does not have a CD drive :)). I did feel that few things can be improved though.
1. I love the solid state disk. However the fact that it is only 8GB [I ordered an upgrade. The default is 4GB] bothers me a bit. The OS and related files take about 40% of the space and you are left with only 4GB to play with. That is not enough at all if you want to take your movies along to watch in the plane. Attaching a power draining external disk may not be an attractive option.
2. Although the keyboard looks ok it takes a bit of getting used to. It is understandable though since they had to fit a fairly sized keybaord into this tiny frame and I can live with that.
3. The camera is optional. I got this one with the camera but they could just make it one of the defaults. If the purpose of a netbook is to be a travel companion then I would say the camera is part of the standard tools.
I absolutely love this mini and am planning to get one myself sometime later. Hope Dell can give an option to get a larger SSD atleast:).
Update -
1.The latest edition of Linux Journal has a similar review and I have to whole heartedly agree to all of it.
2. Dell is shipping larger disks with the Mini now.
1. I love the solid state disk. However the fact that it is only 8GB [I ordered an upgrade. The default is 4GB] bothers me a bit. The OS and related files take about 40% of the space and you are left with only 4GB to play with. That is not enough at all if you want to take your movies along to watch in the plane. Attaching a power draining external disk may not be an attractive option.
2. Although the keyboard looks ok it takes a bit of getting used to. It is understandable though since they had to fit a fairly sized keybaord into this tiny frame and I can live with that.
3. The camera is optional. I got this one with the camera but they could just make it one of the defaults. If the purpose of a netbook is to be a travel companion then I would say the camera is part of the standard tools.
I absolutely love this mini and am planning to get one myself sometime later. Hope Dell can give an option to get a larger SSD atleast:).
Update -
1.The latest edition of Linux Journal has a similar review and I have to whole heartedly agree to all of it.
2. Dell is shipping larger disks with the Mini now.
