You will recall not very long ago, we were sent the fantastically glossy, super lightweight, latest netbook from Dell, the Inspiron Mini 9. It’s taken us some time to review fully in detail, but as you will see in our review below we think Dell has done a great job in bringing us this netbook, though in our review we reported a few shortcomings, but overall it was thoroughly an enjoyable piece of machine to use.
As we mentioned earlier during unboxing of our Dell Inspiron Mini 9, the one we received was the Vodafone edition which sports built in 3G, slightly different from the one which you would be able to order directly from Dell. So let’s first take a quick look at its specifications…
Intel® AtomTM Processor (1.6GHz, 512KB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition SP3
1GB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM.
Intel® 945PM / GS Express Chipset
Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Glossy 8.9 inch LED display (1024X600)
8GB SSD (Solid State drive)
No optical drive available.
USB 2.0 (3)
Integrated 10/100 LAN (RJ45)
15-pin VGA video connector
Audio jacks (1-line out, 1 mic-in)
3-in-1 Media Card Reader
Integrated 1.3MP webcam
802.11g mini-card
Bluetooth® Internal (2.0) mini-card
AC adapter connector
4-cell 32WHr Li-Ion Battery
Dimensions & Weight
Width: 9.13″ (232mm)
Height: 1.07″ (27.2mm) front / 1.25″ (31.7mm) back
Depth: 6.77″ (172mm)
Weight: Starting weight of 2.28 lbs. (1.035 kg)1(8.9″ display, 4 cell battery). Weights will vary depending on configurations and manufacturing variability. [via Dell]
Design
The Inspiron Mini 9 has an incredibly catchy exterior, this is all due to the fact that it’s amazingly shiny and glossy – just about every bit of it. The screen is glossy, so is its lid, and even the silver palm rest along with the surrounding border of the keyboard and the screen on either side. While this all looks very pretty and I mean this in a nice way, it means just about the only parts that won’t track fingerprints are the keyboard, its silver borders (only because you won’t see the fingerprints) and the trackpad.
The LCD screen has an interior border of black in which the integrated webcam is housed above and two speaker bays on either side of a shiny Dell logo are housed below. The keyboard is standard black matte and the trackpad and buttons are the same silver as the palm rest. It all blends nicely, as I’ve said the appearance is catchy, however once after just a few hours of use, the glossy black exterior part of the lid traps all the fingerprints it will ever need. This is especially so for the Inspiron Mini 9, as it is so light, you tend to want to carry it anywhere you go and that means hands and fingers!
Size and Weight
The Inspiron Mini 9 fits wonderfully in with the rest of the class. With a super lightweight of just 2.3lbs and dimensions of just 9.1″ x 6.8″ x 1.3″, the Mini feels comfortable on your lap, and as long as the warm underbody doesn’t bother you the laptop will never be a distraction there.
The AC adapter doesn’t add much weight either, if you plan on bringing along both on a long trip, they only combine to sum up a weight of 2.6lbs. As you can see in the photos, the adapter isn’t bulky at all, only slightly larger than the size of a mobile phone adapter.
Keyboard
Thus far, most of the things we have mentioned about the Mini have been wonderful. However, if the size and weight and its general design are the main pro’s of the Mini, then its keyboard is almost by necessity one of the main minuses. Dell actually does an ok job of fitting as much of a keyboard as it can into such a small area, but it is far from perfect.
All keys above the numbers have been removed, with F1-F10 still accessible by pressing function (Fn) which is already not too convenient at all, however this isn’t the worst part. Some keys such as F11, F12, and scroll/num lock are non existent. If you’re a FireFox user for example, you will know F11 is a great hotkey for switching between full screen especially so if you’re just looking at a 9″ display. Of course, you can always make certain tweaks to get pass this, but why the compromise?
More frustrating than the occasional missing key, however, is the fraction of an inch allowed to such keys as tab, right shift, the period and the comma, and others. The keyboard is sufficiently crowded that touch typing is nearly impossible, and we found ourselves looking down and jabbing the keyboard with one or two fingers in order to avoid making mistakes, this was especially a problem for one of my colleague who had rather larger fingertips. If for any reason you plan on making the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 your primary computer we highly recommend an external set of keyboard and mouse.
Other than the keyboard, there isn’t much for us to whinge about. The Inspiron Mini 9′s trackpad is a great gem. The left-click is about the same size as the right-click and neither make an annoying click sound when you press them, this is great if you’re a late night internet surfer and don’t want to wake anyone else up. One thing though, the trackpad’s horizontal scroll is a bit over sensitive. We found ourselves pressing from right to left almost halfway up the trackpad and instead of moving the mouse, our window attempted to scroll.
Screen and Display
The Inspiron Mini 9 is at the end of the day a netbook so with an 8.9″ LCD display and a resolution of 1024×600, its able to deliver a reasonable amount of screen taking into account that it isn’t a very large unit. Like many netbooks, there is just sufficient room and not alot more to view your normal day to day webpages or documents, but this is what we expected, thus not a downside at all.
As you will remember, the screen has a glossy finish this makes the colors sharp, but can be painful to the eyes when there is a considerable amount of glare, for example, when websurfing outdoors. If you never plan on taking it outdoors, remaining in indoors should not bring out any problems at all.
The Mini 9 has on board the Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 950, it’s not bad at all for a graphics card on a netbook. It powers the Mini 9 smoothly and sufficiently for common multimedia tasks such as watching movies, photos. However, if you’re a keen gamer, you shouldn’t expect to get much gaming experience out of it, as this wasn’t what the Mini 9 was designed to do in the first place.
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Got my mini 9 about a week ago.
It was great for travelling on a train when all you get is a tray table on the back of the seat in front.
One complaint. On a UK train with a 4 person table and power sockets on the wall just above the table, this rather chunky power adapter sticks down too much and so cannot be used.
Thanks for your comment David. We haven’t been on a train with ours, thus never thought about that. But I’m glad you pointed that out for other readers.
I suppose this is quite an important issue, especially now so many commute long distances to work for example, though I didn’t consider the Mini 9′s power adapter to be as large as a few other netbooks’. Thanks so much again for your comment!
By the way David, how have you found the Mini 9 all round as a netbook? We’d love to hear from you.
I really like this, because i travel a lot, and i can not affordable a macbook air, and i will not use windows, so i think the linux version is perfect option for me, i know there are a lot of other brands like hp and asus or whatever who make these nettbooks but with better specs, but they just look so… cheap, just like with Acer, i am fully willing to pay more for the computer if the website is nice.
I really like this, because i travel a lot, and i can not affordable a macbook air, and i will not use windows, so i think the linux version is perfect option for me, i know there are a lot of other brands like hp and asus or whatever who make these nettbooks but with better specs, but they just look so… cheap, just like with Acer, i am fully willing to pay more for the computer if the website is nice.