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Dude, I Got A Dell Mini

Thanks to my lovely Peg! You’re the best baby!

Earlier this year I had been talking about getting a netbook. It was going to be a neat new toy for me. I kept putting it off waiting for the right price point/feature set. Peg told me one day “Your Christmas/Valentines Day/Birthday gift is $400 towards a netbook!”. Wow, that was great. So I kept my eyes open and waited for what I wanted and Dell came out with the Mini 9.

On October 10th, the expected ship date, I got a notification that my shipment would be delayed until the 15th. I was bummed out. Then Monday morning the 13th I got a note saying that it had shipped on the 12th. What a great surprise. Checking the shipping status on Tuesday I discovered it was on the DHL truck out for delivery. Awsome! I got back from lunch about 2 and the package had still not arrived. I checked the delivery status and there was a note saying ‘consignee premesis closed, will attempt next business day’.

On the phone to DHL customer service. The short of it is that if I have an option DHL will not get my shipping business. The long of it is a story you can ask me about.

So Wednesday evening I started playing with the Mini. Nice little machine. The keys are a good size and feels good typing on them. The alphabet and numbers are near full size. Punctuation keys are smaller and in somewhat awkward positions but I’m sure with time I’ll adjust. The screen is real nice and clear for a 8.9 inch size. I like the interface that Dell has put on it. Large icons to click, easy to read and intuitive to use. For advanced users there is a menu item to switch to a ‘classic desktop’. All the software is quick and responsive. Battery life is real good at about 4 hours or so.

Now for the down sides that I’ve found so far. The camera is a bit sluggish. While it takes good pics, in video mode it lags. Not sure if it’s a processor or software issue. SSH does not work in client or server mode. I have not been able to complete a connection yet. In the brief research I’ve done so far it seems to be a known issue with the wireless chip it is using and there are workarounds that I have yet to try. This is a big problem for me. I’ve also yet to find a way to install Truecrypt so I can work with existing files that I have. Then there’s the 16gb SSD that I ordered with it. Only about 4gb is used and the other ~11 gb is unformatted. I’ll be taking care of this on my own but it’s a concern to me how typical users will react to getting a machine with only a fraction of the drive space available to them compared to what they ordered.

All in all it’s a great effort but I do have to wonder what other basic issues I’ll come across while exploring this device. Some of these things really should have been discovered prerelease and dealt with before the users got their hands on it. I will be playing with installing a regular build of Ubuntu, possibly the Ibex beta, this weekend just to see how it works out.

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