Inspiron Mini 9 8G XP

In each section below, we have gathered the best reviews and listed them with the best ones at the top.

Best Quick Reviews

If you only have a few moments, these brief reviews can provide a quick overview, but we recommend spending most of your time on the in-depth reviews below.

Jerry Jackson at Notebook Review provides a one-page review (one long page) that is relatively complete. Here are the important points he makes:

Overall, the look is quite nice, but the glossy LCD lid is a magnet for fingerprints and makes the new netbook look a little tarnished after just a few minutes of use.

The build quality of the Mini 9 is amazingly solid for a subnotebook of this size and weight.

In terms of upgradeability, the Mini 9 is much easier to upgrade than most netbooks currently on the market.

The Mini 9 comes preloaded with dozens of useful applications for everything from work and email to listening to music and watching movies. Unlike the many free applications that come preinstalled on Windows-based computers, almost none of the applications on the Ubuntu operating system should be considered “bloatware.”

The keyboard on the Mini 9 is less cramped than what we’ve seen on the 7-inch and 8.9-inch ASUS Eee PCs, but the Dell keyboard is still very compact.

Also, there is no F11 or F12 key … which is bad for people who use F11 to maximize their web browser window or use F12 as a programmed shortcut key.

The touchpad design is surprisingly nice for a budget netbook. The touchpad buttons are located in the correct position and have nice, deep, well-cushioned presses with no annoying “click” when pressed.

The glossy LED backlit display on the Mini 9 is nice and vibrant with rich colors and good contrast.

While the Mini 9 won’t win any awards for performance within applications, startup is quite fast and overall performance is fast enough to keep most users happy.

The speakers on the Inspiron Mini 9 are reasonably impressive for a budget netbook.

Under normal use, backlight at 100 percent and using wireless for web browsing and watching several DivX movies at 75 percent volume, the Mini 9 managed to deliver three hours and 38 minutes of battery life.

Unfortunately, while the Mini 9 is great, it still suffers from a few of the same problems we’ve seen in other netbooks (heat, annoying glossy plastics, bad keyboard, and a small battery that could have been bigger without sacrificing much size or weight).

CNET provides a short editors’ review. Some of their observations:

The good: More configurable than other Netbooks; good battery life; XP and Linux OS options.

The bad: Some awkward keyboard compromises; no SSD options larger than 16GB.

The bottom line: Dell’s entry into the Netbook market means its time to take these low-cost, low-power PCs seriously. The Inspiron Mini 9 is an excellent example of the form, if not radically different from the competition.

Cisco Cheng provides a short review on PC Magazine’s web site. He opens the article by calling the Inspiron Mini 9 a UMPC (which is entirely wrong), which throws the value of any observations he makes into question. Still he makes a few comments worth quoting:

The 8.9-inch screen is bright and nice to look at, similar to those of the ASUS 900 and the Acer One.

Having a smaller keyboard (88 percent) than the MSI Wind and the HP Mini-Note (both 92 percent) doesn’t help the Mini 9 take over its competition, either—that 4 percent margin makes a difference when you’re typing.

As for its feature set, the Mini 9 is on a par with its peers…

…the final result isn’t quite enough to overtake the MSI Wind, our Editors’ Choice in this category.

Best In-Depth Reviews

Joanna Stern at Laptop Magazine covers the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with a seven-page review.
(Four page review with three pages of extras).

Key points that she makes about the Dell netbook:

Design: The Inspiron Mini 9 is one of the smallest and lightest 8.9-inch mini-notebooks we’ve seen.

Screen: …colors were bright and not at all muted like we’ve seen on ASUS’ Eee PC 901.

Keyboard:

• While the keys allowed for comfortable typing and didn’t severely cramp our hands, they are smaller than those found on the 89 percent–size keyboard on the Acer Aspire one.
• …the right Shift key has been shrunk and moved to the right of the Up arrow button, and the apostrophe key is located on the bottom row of keys. Both changes will cause problems for touch typists until they’ve adjusted.

Touchpad: …the best we have seen on an 8.9-inch system.

Operating System: Not only is Dell’s interface sleeker than both the Eee PC’s Xandros and Acer’s Linpus Linux Lite, but Dell’s Ubuntu version makes switching to the advanced desktop mode to programs easier.

Boot time: …a relatively speedy 35 seconds, although that’s still 15 seconds slower than the Acer Aspire one with Linux.

Battery: We managed to squeeze 3 hours and 12 minutes out of the battery with Wi-Fi on.

Verdict: Despite its inferior keyboard, we recommend the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 over the Aspire one for those users interested in Linux.

Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Anand Lal Shimpi at Anandtech provides a 13-page review of the Inspiron Mini 9 that is truly in-depth. The article spends two full pages on the keyboard alone. The Dell netbook gets completely dissected as well.

My only complaint about this review is that the reviewer seems to only be familiar with the Eee PC 901. So all comparisons are made to that netbook, where it would be so much better to compare the Dell netbook to others with better features than the 901. Even so, the article is definitely worth perusing.

Here are some key points that he makes:

It’s the kind of computer you’d take with you around town to browse the web on, but not for serious work. Writing quick blogs, posting on Facebook walls, IMing, catching up on Digg, are all things you could just as easily do on a smartphone - but it’s easier to do on a netbook.

There are $1500 notebooks that don’t feel this put together.

I’ve got the same problem with the Inspiron Mini that I had with the Eee PC, it’s simply too small to be ergonomic.

The keys that really bothered me the most were the hyphen, comma, colon and apostrophe keys… if you’re typing for accuracy, it’ll drive you insane…

Dell makes the argument that after about 15 minutes you’ll get used to it. I agree. Except for the fact that in theory you’ll be going back to a normal keyboard at some point, and whichever you use the most will make the other one feel quite awkward.

There’s a much greater degree of polish to Dell’s Ubuntu install than Xandros on the Eee PC, functionally the two are equally capable as presenting the netbook as an appliance and not a computer, but Dell’s approach feels a bit more…professional.

If you’ve never used Linux, there’s honestly no reason to be afraid of the base configuration on the Mini. The application launcher is straightforward enough and Ubuntu is user friendly enough that any computer user should be fine.

Battery: …expect the Mini to be good for 3 - 4 hours of usage.

Overall: …it targets the heart of what I believe the netbook user is: someone looking for a simple, relatively comfortable way of getting online and doing basic computing tasks.

Reviews Comparing Other Netbooks

The Anandtech review that is mentioned above makes a lot of comparison’s to the Eee PC 901. Here are some of the specific comparisons:

There’s a much greater degree of polish to Dell’s Ubuntu install than Xandros on the Eee PC [901]…

If you configure the Inspiron Mini as close as possible to the Eee PC 901 you end up with a system that’s got around a $100 advantage on paper. Now you can find 901s for closer to $560, and obviously with the 901 you get a bigger battery and 802.11n support, neither of which are options on the Mini…

While ASUS’ Eee PC 901 has a fan just like any other notebook, the Inspiron Mini 9 relies on the heatspreader and unforced convection to dissipate heat.

Boot time is the only area where the Mini really falls short compared to the ASUS Eee PC 901. While the 901 can start from an off state and take you into its Xandros OS in 27 seconds, the Mini needs 40 to do the same.

…I believe that the Eee [PC 901] and the Mini are really good for two different types of users. The Eee is more of the tinkerer’s netbook, it’s got a bit more storage, 802.11n and comes more feature filled out of the box. Dell’s Mini ships at a lower price and with a correspondingly reduced configuration, but it targets the heart of what I believe the netbook user is: someone looking for a simple, relatively comfortable way of getting online and doing basic computing tasks.

Special Topic Articles

Laptop Magazine has an article that provides detailed instructions on how to add RAM to a Dell Inspiron Mini 9. Compared to other netbooks, it is obvious that the Dell has done an outstanding job of engineering the Mini 9 to be easy to upgrade.

Dell has the best manual of any netbook, by far, with it’s Service Manual. This manual provide detailed instructions, complete with pictures, for adding RAM, replacing the SSD drive, installing a SIM module and much more.

Here are the best videos for the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.

Best Video Reviews:

Joanna Stern of Laptop Magazine does a really nice job on video reviews. This is the best one so far. It runs almost seven minutes.

Notebook Review has a rather dry video review of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 that covers almost all of its features in just four minutes.

Dan Ackerman of CNET has a real quick (less than two minutes) review of the Inspiron Mini 9.

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