Dell Mini 9 Review

About a month ago I received a Dell Mini 9 laptop from Vodafone for review. I first wrote about my first impressions of this small laptop over here. A quick recap of that post mentioned that I was impressed with the small size and build quality. However, I have to admit that it was quite a difficult laptop to get used to. Lets take a closer look.

Dell Mini 9 Usability

For the first few days of using the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 I have to admit that I had a hard time with it. The keyboard is small with some of the keys being even smaller such as the right shift key which I often use. However, I was forced in to using it for about 3 hours to do some writing for Gadget Venue and after those 3 hours I was actually pleasantly surprised and grew to like it. I found that once I got on with writing that the keyboard was actually simple enough to use while sat in a car with a very low amount of errors. Yes, the right shift key still bugs me a little, but apart form that I can now honestly say I am converted to a mini sized laptop and often can be found using it rather then my larger 15.4″ Compaq that I used for 2 years before.

The 8.9″ screen has a 1024 x 600 resolution which is enough width to browse most sites comfortably. It is rare to see a need to side scroll which is good. The quality of screen is top notch too with crystal clear images.

The touch pad took a bit to get used to as it’s also a fraction smaller then larger laptops. After getting used to the left and right buttons I find it just as easy to use as any other laptop.

The biggest bonus of this laptop is it’s small size. I hate carrying my Compaq laptop around as it’s just too big and bulky. With the Mini 9 it’s simple to carry around and is just like carrying a light weight book around with you. Also as it’s so small there is no real need for a laptop bag and it can be shoved in any compartment in your car keeping it out of view. The second biggest bonus is the SIM card slot that is built in next to where the battery connects up. The Dell Mini 9 has built in 3G communications and when an appropriate SIM card with dataplan is inserted you have broadband speed internet in most locations (more on this later).

I found the battery to be excellent too. I managed to use the laptop on both wireless and mobile broadband for about 3 hours switching between each type of network. This was with the screen on full brightness too. Although 3 hours isn’t the greatest battery life I do feel that 3 hours using either wifi or mobile broadband is acceptable and beat my expectations.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Connectivity

As mentioned above, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 has a plethora of connectivity options. The showcase of these being mobile broadband. Simply insert a SIM card in and away you go. I successfully tested mobile broadband in a hotel in London and managed to get satisfactory speeds from my room. Also on a drive from London to Leeds we tested surfing the internet for 2 hours on the motorway and only got disconnected twice which I was amazed at. The brief outages just popped up a message saying no network found. Seconds later we reconnected and continued on browsing. Of course it’s hard to give a definite test result as mobile signals vary from street to street, but the several times I used the connection I was never let down and this was on a good 100+ mile run as well as in various parts in the south of England.

One of my big concerns about mobile broadband is cost. As this was a trial from Vodafone I took the opportunity to use mobile broadband to see how much data I would use. A check of numbers now show that I used mobile broadband for around 10 hours and in that time I ate through about 185MB of data transfer. Now I doubt I could use mobile broadband for more then an hour a day, so with those numbers we could assume less then 20MB per day of data could be used (most of the time I’d use wireless internet from the office or home). So with in a month I might use 600MB which would put me on to one of Vodafone’s 1GB/Month plans costing £25/Month (with a free Dell Mini 9). If I was to go for the next plan up at £30/Month I could in theory (with my browsing style) work for about 5 hours a day and be with in their 3GB data usage cap.

Back on to other connectivity… Wi-fi can be found in this laptop which I made the most use of around the office and home and also a wired port is available for those with out Wi-fi or who want to be a little more secure. Also you will find bluetooth on the Mini 9 which has a number of good profiles available which allow the use of a headset and also the ability to connect your mobile phone to make and receive calls.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Features

The Dell Mini 9 has a built in webcam which I found very handy for Skype video calls. The built in speakers and microphone and decent connectivity speeds made this laptop great for Skype video calls. Also on the Mini 9 you will find an SD card slot which also accepts MS Pro and MMC cards. Card readers in my eyes are essential these days and are very handy for transferring music and pictures from an MP3 player and camera. 3 USB ports can be found on the Dell Mini 9 also (2 on the left and 1 on the right) as well as a VGA out for connecting to a plasma screen, monitor or projector. The lid of the laptop is also catch-less which is another small touch that I quite liked.

On the storage side of things there is quite a low amount of space. This model has an 8GB SSD for storage which about 5GB of that is already taken up out of the box. This doesn’t leave a lot of storage space. The good news is that it’s all standard SSD type hardware, so a quick upgrade is just a matter of removing a few screws in the panel underneath and popping a new SSD in.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Operating System

The Dell Mini 9 I reviewed came pre installed with Windows XP Home edition. At first I have to admit that I was a bit frustrated with the slow speed of things and almost gave up on it, however after realising that Dell in their infinite wisdom had set almost every program to load in to the system tray it was a simple task of eliminating stuff that wasn’t needed. Software such as MSN messenger, the webcam software, every AV option from McAfee are not always needed, so I disabled these and am happy to report that boot up times and general speed is very acceptable now. Disabling these programs from loading up at the start does not break them… it just means that I only load the webcam software when I need it and not every time the laptop boots up.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Conclusion

The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 at first was quite frustrating to use, but after being forced in to using it for a few hours straight to actually get some real work done I was pleasantly surprised and now tend to use this laptop as my main laptop due to it’s small size and ease of being able to carry it’s light weightiness around.

Software load times were slow “out of the box”, but after a few custom tweaks I am happy to report that all is OK in this department.

On the Vodafone network the Dell Mini 9 is superb with several hours of usage in various locations and 2 hours of travelling I have to admit that I am happy with connectivity and battery life.

The final word is that Dell have created a fantastic little laptop. If you need more space then shop around for a larger SSD or HD (if that’s an option). If you are happy with just a few GB of storage then go for it. The alternative to SSD is to make use of the SD card slot and stick 8GB extra in there.

PS… I wrote this whole Dell Mini 9 review on the netbook itself… (all 1400+ words of it).

More details can be found at Dell

Dell Mini 9
Matthew
3.7
28th December 2008
Dell Mini 9 Netbook review with built in 3G