Dell Inspiron Mini 9

[-spam-]

Ive seen a lot of threads about the MSI wind and the Asus offerings but not much about this little power pack. Am I the only person who bought one?

Got mine last week and after playing with a few peoples winds and various EeePCs, I cant see why anyone would go for either over this. Sure, the hard drive space is small but come on, its solid. No moving parts to break, runs with no noise at all and the screen is gorgeous.

It is also more appealing to me than the mini 10 (which i knew about before I ordered the 9) because of the 10s obscure graphics card and a few other things.

[linverson]

hey mate how much did you get it for?

what OS are you running? Linux?

[-spam-]

Originally Posted by linverson

hey mate how much did you get it for?

what OS are you running? Linux?

Just missed out on a special a few weeks ago, so had to settle for using my uni student discount bringing it to $569. Wasnt bothered though, get the money back from K-Rudd anyways

As for OS, I put osx on it pretty much as soon as I got it except for a quick look to see how it ran with ubuntu 8.04. Lovely to have everything working 100% with it too.

XP was pretty slow and laggy which was surprising, but OS X runs pretty smoothly with 1gb of ram. Ubuntu ran pretty quick as well and I would be happy running that instead.

[linverson]

can i ask you about the student discount? Did you order as a student online?

[rdorman]

hey,

yeah my dad bought one with winxp, i think my eeepc701 with its 900mhz processor actually runs faster... =/
though mine is nlited, it shouldnt make that much of a difference.

[-spam-]

Originally Posted by linverson

can i ask you about the student discount? Did you order as a student online?

Your school/uni/tafe should have a page through dell that gives you a coupon code and another code to put in just before you finalise your order. For my uni (Griffith Uni) it was:

http://www.dell.com.au/griffith

May have to look around on the website for where ever you go to find the correct link though.

Originally Posted by rdorman

hey,

yeah my dad bought one with winxp, i think my eeepc701 with its 900mhz processor actually runs faster... =/
though mine is nlited, it shouldnt make that much of a difference.

Tell him to throw ubuntu or something on it, it makes a hell of a difference. Could not get over how slow it was to boot into XP and then do basic tasks. Really liking the 20 odd second boot with os x compared to it. Not that I have needed to turn the machine for a week, sleep works a treat.

[Deanodriver]

I kinda like the Dell. It's definitely a looker, it's lighter than most of the others, and being fanless is pretty good too.

[strafe]

Just a quick heads up, just recieved an email from Officeworks:

Dell Inspiron Mini 9in N270 Notebook DE560920AU - $548.00

[rdorman]

Originally Posted by -spam-

Tell him to throw ubuntu or something on it, it makes a hell of a difference. Could not get over how slow it was to boot into XP and then do basic tasks. Really liking the 20 odd second boot with os x compared to it. Not that I have needed to turn the machine for a week, sleep works a treat.

he cant he uses it for his business, and he is pretty much a technophobe. all it has on it is firefox, outlook and office.

even has to have office 2003 because he doesnt know how to use 07, and doesnt want to learn :P

[jleetj]

hey Spam, how much space were you left with after a fresh install of osx? Also, what length of battery life are you getting with osx?

Thanks!

[kearnsyaus]

Originally Posted by jleetj

hey Spam, how much space were you left with after a fresh install of osx? Also, what length of battery life are you getting with osx?

Thanks!

I installed OSX last night on my mini and after leaving off the language packs and printer drivers I think it used just over half of the 16Gb SSD. I have around 5GB now after installing Open Office 3, Skype and a few other programs.

[csimpson]

I have a mini9 and love it

First thing I did was buy a 2GB stick of RAM and chuck it in. For ~$30 it was an absolute no brainer and sped the whole machine up immensely

I've got Win7 on it at the moment but I'm considering puttting Leopard OSX on there, just for the mini-Mac factor.

Interestingly enough I've been using it as a bit of an e-book reader lately, getting through the CS Forester Hornblower series in PDF with the laptop turned on its side Vertical viewing angles aren't fantastic on the screen but it certainly beats reading off a static screen.

[linverson]

csisimpson - i thought the media (as in online stated that it could only support 1 gig? or is it that it will come in 1 gig?)

how is the build quality? cause ive read that there are problems associated with XPS build quality.

Sorry about the grammer, stuck in scientific writing mode.

ANU doesnt have Dell offers anymore

[Mark-D]

I picked up my mini for $578 @ the good guys last friday
however its still in the box haven't opened yet.
going tomorrow to msy to pickup a 2gb stick of ram for it

the main reason i got one was to install osx on it, however i want to get a
runcore 32gb pci-e ssd drive for it to improve the read/write performance.

Click here for a comparison of runcore to the stec's that come in the mini

the only problem is trying to find a place that has them.

Also to those running xp make sure you have disk compression turned off...

Some good sites to check
http://dellmini.wordpress.com/tips-and-tweaks/
osx86project - 10.5.5 on the Dell Inspiron/mini 9
MyDellMini • Dell Inspiron Mini Blog

[Mark-D]

Originally Posted by linverson

csisimpson - i thought the media (as in online stated that it could only support 1 gig? or is it that it will come in 1 gig?)

how is the build quality? cause ive read that there are problems associated with XPS build quality.

Sorry about the grammer, stuck in scientific writing mode.

ANU doesnt have Dell offers anymore

The 1gb ram is more a microsoft limitation than the dell/chipset i believe, since they wouldn't allow xp for the netbook with more than 1gb of ram.