Derrick
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- Joined
- Nov 22, 2010
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- 5,085
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- 5
The mini 9 is a solid netbook and certainly worth looking at if you are in the market.
Ultra mobile computing is probably the only computer segment growing at the moment, and it is said that last year, netbooks and ultra mobiles accounted for around 20% of all notebook sales – a significant figure, likely to grow even more given the economic climate and the advances made in several key areas. One of which is battery life, of which the Dell Mini 9 has plenty of. With a specified peak operational battery life of 32 hours, the Mini 9 is good for long-distance travel and working in remote areas where power is not readily available.
Our own testing did not quite allow us to reach the 32 hour mark, but suffice it to say, continuous viewing of video on the unit allowed us more than five hours of viewing – which is incredible, especially since we were using the built-in speaker system and not headphones. Specification-wise, the Dell Mini 9’s spec sheet ‘reads’ like the vast majority of Atom-based notebooks, in that it features the N270 CPU and the GMA 950 graphics processor unit from Intel. Sound is courtesy of the Realtek ALC268, which is not the best from the company but more than adequate for netbooks. In fact, it sounds very good when paired with the speaker system on the Mini 9.
The unit we had for review features an 8GB solid-state drive and 1GB of DDR2 533MHz RAM. Not anything out of the ordinary, but for those who may need a little more storage and performance, the unit can be upgraded to 4GB of RAM and the total storage doubled to 16GB. Nevertheless, most will find the specs more than adequate for common tasks. With the Mini 9, Dell has packaged Microsoft Works 9.0 and McAfee Security Center, making the unit ready to use upon first boot up. As one would expect, there is no optical drive on the unit, but this should not be a problem for most. Although the unit doesn’t feature much space for installing additional software, should the need arise, a USB flash drive can always be used.
A particularly impressive feature of the unit is the 8.9-inch display, which is bright, sharp and clear. The native resolution of 1,024 x 600 is perfect for extended hours of viewing, despite it being a little smaller than the 10.1–inch screens on some competing netbooks. Above the screen, there’s the usual 1.3-megapixel camera, which features a decent resolution and is very easy to set up. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and LAN functionality round off the unit’s features, making it a solid netbook and certainly worth looking at if you are in the market.
Ultra mobile computing is probably the only computer segment growing at the moment, and it is said that last year, netbooks and ultra mobiles accounted for around 20% of all notebook sales – a significant figure, likely to grow even more given the economic climate and the advances made in several key areas. One of which is battery life, of which the Dell Mini 9 has plenty of. With a specified peak operational battery life of 32 hours, the Mini 9 is good for long-distance travel and working in remote areas where power is not readily available.
Our own testing did not quite allow us to reach the 32 hour mark, but suffice it to say, continuous viewing of video on the unit allowed us more than five hours of viewing – which is incredible, especially since we were using the built-in speaker system and not headphones. Specification-wise, the Dell Mini 9’s spec sheet ‘reads’ like the vast majority of Atom-based notebooks, in that it features the N270 CPU and the GMA 950 graphics processor unit from Intel. Sound is courtesy of the Realtek ALC268, which is not the best from the company but more than adequate for netbooks. In fact, it sounds very good when paired with the speaker system on the Mini 9.
The unit we had for review features an 8GB solid-state drive and 1GB of DDR2 533MHz RAM. Not anything out of the ordinary, but for those who may need a little more storage and performance, the unit can be upgraded to 4GB of RAM and the total storage doubled to 16GB. Nevertheless, most will find the specs more than adequate for common tasks. With the Mini 9, Dell has packaged Microsoft Works 9.0 and McAfee Security Center, making the unit ready to use upon first boot up. As one would expect, there is no optical drive on the unit, but this should not be a problem for most. Although the unit doesn’t feature much space for installing additional software, should the need arise, a USB flash drive can always be used.
A particularly impressive feature of the unit is the 8.9-inch display, which is bright, sharp and clear. The native resolution of 1,024 x 600 is perfect for extended hours of viewing, despite it being a little smaller than the 10.1–inch screens on some competing netbooks. Above the screen, there’s the usual 1.3-megapixel camera, which features a decent resolution and is very easy to set up. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and LAN functionality round off the unit’s features, making it a solid netbook and certainly worth looking at if you are in the market.