Dell Inspiron Mini 9

...Mainly it will cover the Dell Mini9 netbook, which is after all the heading under which it is filed, but inevitably it will also cover the Vodafone mobile broadband contract under which it was bought.

Computing has gone through a bit of an upheaval recently. Things used to be so much more straightforward; ever since I bought my first PC the standard domestic buyer would need to spend about £1000 to get something that could cope with ...
...the board and while the Dell isn’t the best in all categories it really only falls down in one area, which I’ll cover later, and it does have one significant advantage in terms of connectivity. In order to get internet access out and about, while not relying on wireless hot spots etc, you’re going to have to sign up to a mobile broadband account. These are usually provided by the big mobile phone carriers and service is delivered via a dongle (a ... more

This is something of a two-fold review. Mainly it will cover the Dell Mini9 netbook, which is after all the heading under which it is filed, but inevitably it will also cover the Vodafone mobile broadband contract under which it was bought.

Computing has gone through a bit of an upheaval recently. Things used to be so much more straightforward; ever since I bought my first PC the standard domestic buyer would need to spend about £1000 to get something that could cope with all their needs, for a couple of years at least. When that machine began to show it’s age you’d buy another for the same price but with a specification to match the current needs. This was true of the first three or four PCs I bought and only the most recent allowed me to spend under £800 and stay current. The same was broadly true of laptops, prohibitively expensive in the early days for quite a while they would cost a little more than a desktop and offer slightly lower performance but again the price would remain fairly constant while the specifications increased. This was all blown out of the water a couple of years ago when Asus produced the EeePC that was, frankly, nothing short of revolutionary. Whereas before you paid a premium for miniaturisation here a mainstream supplier had gone completely the other way and was offering a fully-fledged, yet tiny, laptop for peanuts (about £200 anyway).

These days all the key manufacturers provide small, cheap laptops (although as these are often noticeably lower specced than normal laptops they are often referred to as netbooks).

A nine-inch laptop – what’s the point?
As any bloke will tell you a gadget is its own justification but what Asus did is the holy grail of retailing – identify and exploit a gap in a saturated market. In our increasingly wired world many of us will now have a house full of IT kit; desktops, laptops, smart phones and so on. In my house we have the desktop, my work laptop, my own laptop, my iPhone, my wife’s work laptop and my daughter’s laptop. So when my own laptop packed up around Christmas I found myself in a bit of a dilemma. Not about whether to replace it, leaving myself one gadget down was never going to be an option, but what to replace it with. Ever since the EeePC came out (and further back in time the Toshiba Libretto) I’ve fancied one of these mini laptops. I’ve never bought into the laptop as desktop replacement so for me they have always had to be portable, but with the best will in the world affordable and decent laptops were usually knocking on for 3kg, light enough to be portable but heavy enough to make daily lugging on the train a pain.
So, now that circumstances and technology have converged I could get down to the fun business of comparing and selecting some lovely technology to buy.

First up was to lay down some minimum specs. Screen size (and therefore overall size) was the first consideration; I didn’t need another full size laptop but wanted something a bit more usable than the iPhone. A nine inch screen is more than usable, for short periods of time, and allows you to do pretty much everything you want to do on a PC. Next up was the operating system, purely in terms of pick up and go familiarity I wanted to have windows XP installed. One of the main reasons for getting a netbook (and hence the name) is the ability to get on-line when you’re out and about, so connectivity is important. The final consideration was the usual build quality / reliability question.

Looking around the market place there are several good options; with Samsung, Toshiba et al all offering models you should find one to suit. It was hard to find one that came out on top across the board and while the Dell isn’t the best in all categories it really only falls down in one area, which I’ll cover later, and it does have one significant advantage in terms of connectivity. In order to get internet access out and about, while not relying on wireless hot spots etc, you’re going to have to sign up to a mobile broadband account. These are usually provided by the big mobile phone carriers and service is delivered via a dongle (a memory stick-like device that plugs into the laptop). The Dell’s USP is that this modem is integrated into the netbook itself meaning that you don’t need to carry around an extra piece of kit that is easily damaged and highly losable.

The Dell Mini9 is, at the time of writing, only available through a Vodafone mobile broadband contract meaning shopping around is not an option. For 3g/gprs access with a 3GB monthly limit you will pay Vodafone £25 per month including VAT, based on a 24 month contract. Given that similarly rated access via a dongle will cost in the region of £15 per month this means that overall cost of the netbook is about £240 including VAT.

The Dell Mini 9 ~
Weighing a fraction under 1kg this is noticeable yet unobtrusive. Similar in size to a hardback novel it is smaller and lighter than most text books. The 8.9inch screen has a widescreen aspect and a glossy finish. Corners may have been cut to build the Mini to the budget but not with the screen, running with a resolution of 1,024 x 600 it is bright and clear with vivid colours and sharp text reproduction. The discrete power cable, not unlike a phone charger, adds about 200g to the overall carry weight.
The Mini9 runs on the back of an Intel Atom 1.6GHz N270 processor, partnered with 1GB of memory. Performance is never going to be its strong point and it’ll never be a match for the full size machines but that is not the point. It will run just fine with a single Office application open along with e-mail and internet ticking over in the background. Open a second or third application and you may begin to notice the difference but as long as you stay in 2D mode it is always workable. Watching video is a pleasure largely due to the excellent screen and another good use of the Mini9 when travelling. I haven’t tried any proper games on it and I wouldn’t expect it to be any great shakes but if it’s a couple of years old and not too resource hungry you might get away with an old favourite.

Given that it will spend its life bouncing around the bottom of bags a certain robustness is required, although this should not be at the expense of weight. The Mini9 achieves this and surpasses many other netbooks and budget laptops I’ve seen. Reassuringly the plastic casing is strong and there is no flex in the chassis, this contrasts with the full size budget Toshiba laptop I bought last year where money had clearly been saved on a more flimsy chassis.
In terms of looks the Dell manages to achieve a high quality appearance, akin to higher end Sony’s and Dell’s. Glossy silver/grey and black panels make up the case and everything, keyboard, track pad, is pleasingly proportioned. A web cam is also integrated into the case.

What’s pleasing on the eye, however, isn’t always pleasing in use. The slimmed down keyboard makes serious work a bit of a chore, the keys are uniformly a fraction smaller than normal and while this itself is liveable the right hand shift/cursor keys are significantly shrunk making them awkward to use. They've gone as far as dispensing with dedicated Function keys altogether - instead relegating them to secondary FN key functions along the middle ASD row - and have done away with F11 and F12 completely. The keyboard is perfectly usable for light Office use and internet surfing but any attempt to touch type at speed will prove tricky.

I’m not a big fan of track pads, and if I was using the netbook more seriously I would plug in a mouse, but the one supplied here is as comfortable to use as any I’ve used before. Virtually full size it is easy to use with the right degree of sensitivity

The second negative is far more important, and may well be a deal breaker for many. The Mini9 has a paltry 8GB SSD hard drive, surely the smallest currently supplied. Given that nearly 4GB of that is taken by the XP installation and a further 1GB by necessary utilities, that doesn’t leave a lot for the user. I have managed to squeeze in a slimmed down MS Office set as well as some all important net applications (who can live without Google Earth?) but I’m left to juggle about 1.5GB of spare capacity. An internal SD card reader has alleviated data storage constraints to some degree as I have added an 8GB card (£10 from Amazon) but I’m still switching additional applications in and out in a way I haven’t done since my first PC. Obviously, with a unit this size there is no optical drive.

The PC comes pre-installed with the usual software suspects and given the paltry HD supplied most of these will be stripped out ASAP. The resource hungry MS Works and McAfee security suites are the first to go followed by the unnecessary Google Desktop. These can be replaced by the more useful, and free, Open Office suite and equally free Avira anti virus. There are also a whole host of wireless/broadband/connectivity applications installed but as I don’t know what they all specifically do I’ve had to leave them in place.

In terms of connectivity the Mini9 has pretty much all the bases covered. The internal HSDPA adapter allows 3g and GPRS mobile broadband access at very acceptable speeds. Google Earth downloaded and installed in around a minute and streamed audio/video has been handled comfortably. Connecting to my home wireless network was predictably straightforward with XP’s wizards leading the way and there is an Ethernet port for wired network connection. Bluetooth is available but there is no infrared.

In addition to the SD slot there are three USB 2.0 slots split across both sides, a serial port for outputting to a monitor or projector and jacks for microphone and headphones.

I’ve found the battery life quite impressive. I use this mostly at work where my current client declines to provide internet access to freelancers. Turning it on at around 9:00am it will run constantly until midday before giving any low battery warnings and I’ve used it to drive two hour presentations and used barely half the battery. It should easily cope with viewing a film and some serious surfing between charges.

When I purchased this from the Vodafone showroom I was also given a couple of extra items as sweeteners. First was a carry case, more of a protective wallet/pouch as it fits the Mini9 very snugly with no room for anything else, including the power cable. This was retailing at £15 and even if it isn’t thrown in I would recommend buying one just to keep it protected in transit. Like a little Russian doll the free carry case also came with a couple of free gifts inside. This time there was a screen cleaner and cloth set and an 8GB SanDisk Cruzer memory stick, the memory stick comes with U3 software that allows some software (Open Office for example) to be run from the stick rather than the internal hard drive further relieving the pressure on HD capacity. All very useful and all worth buying separately if not included. A PAYG sim card was also thrown in.

Vodafone~
The showroom staff were helpful and patient when I was setting up the contract and didn’t try to push any extras onto me. They did sneakily add an insurance package (£3.50 a month) but this could be cancelled over the phone the next day. Everything was arranged there and then and by the time I got back to the office an hour later I was able to get online straightaway. The Vodafone Mobile Connect software makes hooking up to the internet very easy and includes some useful features for managing your usage. This is very important when you’re on a strictly limited tariff, going over your monthly allowance can be costly. I was initially concerned that the 3GB monthly limit might prove a problem but this has not been the case. If your surfing is of the Web 1.0 variety (calling up web pages, viewing and then moving on) then 3GB is plenty and you could almost run it 24/7. If you are more of a Web 2.0 style user (uploading and downloading content) you should still find this plenty but you will need to keep an eye on the usage metres if you are streaming a lot of video etc. After four months of use I have barely managed to clear 2GB in any month although I have cheated by deferring any software updates for when I’m connected to my home network.

I have had no problems connecting to the mobile broadband service, the Connect software will usually detect and connect in about 30 seconds and the number of dropped connections can be counted on one hand. All my usage has been in London where you would expect coverage to be good so I can’t comment on life outside the M25 but Vodafone claim 80% coverage in the UK. Broadband speeds are a murky area at best, both for mobile and fixed line, but Vodafone are well regarded in the trade papers and as I’ve said I’ve no complaints with speeds.

In summary~
On the plus side the Mini9 is small but beautifully formed. It is light yet robust and has a great screen. The integrated modem makes it a virtually unique all-in-one mobile broadband/netbook package. The Dell/Vodafone partnership is well met; quality hardware allied to reliable connectivity has so far been faultless.
On the minus side the keyboard can be constraining for serious use and the paltry hard drive capacity is an unwelcome reminder of early PC’s. Being internal the modem cannot be shared with other computers.

These negatives are all relative though. Realistically this will be your second or even third, PC so the number of applications you need to run on it should be limited. Likewise, alternative storage options can be used, online or networked for example, and capacious SD cards and memory sticks are now so cheap that you should have plenty of storage space for all that digital media we need to get by on.

Conclusion~
As gadgets go this is a good one, it might even justify itself for its own usefulness. I ummed and ahhed for a good while before going for this option but after several months usage I have no regrets. All the drawbacks were clear before I took the plunge and there have been no nasty surprises since. Recommended. 

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