Ports and Connectivity

The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 features a good amount of connectivity, although you won’t find any HD ports. Like with most netbooks, you also won’t find an optical drive neither. Still, it’s as much as you can expect from a netbook, if not, even more.

The Mini 9 packs Integrated 10/100 LAN (RJ45), 802.11g for WiFi and Bluetooth^® Internal (2.0) mini-card, plus our version of the Mini 9 (Vodafone) supports built in 3G therefore a slot for its sim card can be found when the battery is taken out. Have a look at the pictures below and you will see how it works.

We’re aware that the Mini 9 shown on Dell’s product page actually has no mention of 3G connectivity, we’re not entirely sure of the reason for this. What we do know is that Vodafone announced in September, 2008 that it had won a bid to exclusively offer the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 for free with a 2 year contract. On November 25, 2008 Dell began offering a built in 3G mobile broadband option for US models. The $125 option is available for use on the AT&T network and qualifying customers may be eligible for a $120 credit with a 2-year service contract. [via Wikipedia] However, we have no word on this regarding UK models bought directly through Dell.

The LCD pivots not just above but behind the keyboard, which means the power cord, usually located on the back, is pushed to the left side. Also on the left side are 2 USB ports as well as a 3 in 1 multicard reader.

The right side contains headphone/microphone jacks, a third USB port, 15-pin VGA video connector outlet and Ethernet.

No ports on the front, although we do have a power indicator light as well as a battery indicator light.

Upgrading

Dell has actually made this unit fairly upgradable. As always with a Dell there is a reasonable amount of customization available through their website, and you can choose between Linux and Windows XP, 512MB RAM or 1GB, 4GB, 8GB or 16GB SSD, webcam or no webcam, and even a choice of color between alpine white (which might track fewer prints) and obsidian black. It’s also easier to manually upgrade than most other netbooks, with most of the upgradable parts grouped together directly underneath a simple access panel in front of the battery.

The Inspiron Mini doesn’t really have room for too many surprise features, but it does have a few nice touches. First is the optional integrated Bluetooth, which is in a lot of notebooks but not everywhere and certainly comes in handy on a portable unit like this. It also has the optional integrated webcam, with options of .3MP or 1.3MP, and a multicard reader. Most interesting, however, is the internal mobile broadband antennae.

Real-life usage

Having a netbook always comes in handy and the Mini 9 certainly does its job brilliantly as a netbook. The Dell Mini is small and light enough to pretty much stick anywhere, whether you’re putting it down on the coffee table, on your lap, or hidden between books in a bookshelf. After the novelty of having a computer we could pick up and put down casually with one hand wore off, the limitations of the unit began to shine through. The keyboard is too cramped to touch type, and if you’re used to that, pretty much everything you do becomes slower when you have to hunt-and-peck. The hard drive, at 8GB, can house a few movies and music albums but can hardly store a collection. The base of the unit also ran fairly warm, not to the point where we had to shift it from leg to leg, but to the point where we could feel it.

So here are the main points from our review summarised into bullet points…

Pros:

• Extremely light in weight, convenient to carry
• Shiny, glossy appealing design that is solid to hold and handle
• Literally silent due to hard drive being SSD
• Excellent selection of connectivity, along with built in features such as webcam
• Good all round performance, running Windows XP does not disappoint

Cons:

• Glossy design is too a shortcoming as it was an absolute fingerprint absorber
• Keyboard design requires future improvement (read above on keyboard design)
• Our 8GB SSD was insufficient, pre installed Windows and software had already occupied most of free space, resulting in just 2GB available

Testing and trying out he Dell Inspiron Mini 9 was a genuine pleasure, so long as we viewed it realistically. The 8.9″ screen size and 1024 x 600 resolution was adequate for viewing websites and video clips, movies on the go and combined with a weight of just 2.3lbs, it was extremely easy to have the unit move around wherever you go.

As long as we were performing light tasks like blogging the 1GB RAM and 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor served perfectly well, the 8GB SSD was very quiet and felt almost non existent. You won’t be watching Blu-Ray on the Mini 9 and if you need to type more than a few lines in a row it does becomes just slightly tedious, but for a lightly used secondary computer it serves perfectly. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is perfect for travelers who want to check their email while on the go, desktop users who want to be able to access the internet anywhere in the house, and even as a primary computer for people who really don’t use a computer very often but want internet access to be available when they need it. As long as you know you want a netbook and know the purpose of netbooks, the Dell Mini is an excellent choice for anyone.

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