Dell Inspiron Mini 9

Vodafone are selling this for £30 a month for 2 years with 3GB data allowance. Thats a hefty contract as that comes to £720 altogether for a netbook and internet. Taking into account that Dell are selling the laptop for about £280, the internet works out to be £540 for the two years, or £22.50 a month. To be honest, its cheaper to buy separately as its only £15 a month for 3GB, on a 1 or two year contract.
So why do I have this from Vodafone? well, i won it in a competition!

Dell are coming along quite nicely with their range of laptops to be rather sturdy and reliable. This laptop is both sturdy and reliable. its also very portable, and looks quite nice too with its black gloss top lid. The netbook is quite light at only 1kg but feels solid.

Anyway, here are the tech specs.

* 8.9inch LCD screen
* 1.6GHZ Intel® Atom Processor
* Microsoft® Windows® XP Operating System with Microsoft® Works
* 1GB Ram
* 8GB SSD hard drive (+ built-in card reader allowing memory expansion)
* Weighs less than 1KG
* Integrated Bluetooth™
* Just 9.1 inches X 6.7 inches
* Wi-Fi enabled
* Integrated Webcam

Opening it up, the 9 stands for, well a 9" screen. which for many netbooks is some good going. The screen is nicely bright and crisp, displaying everything with good quality. The keyboard however feels rather cramp and does take some getting used to. Realistically, Dell aren't going to fit in a full size keyboard in there. I am used to it now so i can type quite quickly, but i do the wrong key every so often. The touchpad is also "mini" but it is enough.

Do bear in mind that netbooks are not to replace your daily laptop or desktop. They are really the bare essentials. With the vodafone built in, I can always be connected to the internet. If I don't want to eat into my allowance, the built in Wifi is very powerful. As a netbook, this is fantastic. You can do all your web browsing and internet stuffs with ease. Battery life is fantastic too, i can get about 2 to 3 hours out of mine.

Using the laptop is very good. As its only XP, it loads quickly with the Atom processor and the 1gig of ram is sufficient given what you can realistically run on this netbook. Lets face it, you're not going to be doing any MATLAB or playing Command & Conquer on this.

With only 8GB of SSD, you can fill this up very quickly, particularly with XP updates etc, but with it being SSD, it loads what you want very quickly, whilst prolonging battery life. A memory card reader is built in which allows you to expand your "built in" storage space, or just use it to transfer pics from your camera etc.

The integrated webcam at the top of the screen captures enough at a very good quality for you to skype with your family on the other side of the earth. There are 3 USB ports which is sufficient to connect your various peripherals. Other ports include a VGA out, Network lan port, headphone and microphone ports.

As a netbook, this is as good as they come.