Hands-on with the Dell Inspiron Mini 9
We’ve known for some instance that Dell was working on a Netbook-style laptop–the same kind of small, low-power, inexpensive system made popular by Asus and the Eee PC line. And even though there are not many surprises in the just-announced Inspiron Mini 9 (previous leaks revealed the system’s design and features), it’s still exciting to see a major player back the Netbook concept in a big way.
Component-wise, the Mini 9 is similar to other recent Netbooks, such as the Eee PC 901 and the Acer Aspire One, and includes Intel’s Atom CPU. But in typical Dell fashion, there are more customization options than we’ve seen in a Netbook before.
Our pop quiz unit arrived with 1GB of RAM, a 16GB solid-state hard drive, and Windows XP. That config costs $514 and comes very close to hitting the benchmarks we set out in our “Building the Perfect Netbook” feature, which asked for similar components, but possibly a slightly bigger SSD hard drive and an impulse-purchase $499 price tag.
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Original post by Dan Ackerman
