TV with DVR & Internet: $89.90/mo
Miscellaneous laptop discussions : Has anyone actually bought a Dell Mini Nine?
Has anyone actually bought a Dell Mini Nine?
by tcantrelln - 10/4/08 6:12 PMAnd can describe the for sure set up and running? Have a boss who had the itch to have the one with XP home, the larger SSD, etc. For him the SSD is not going to be big enough after a couple of weeks. Will the Nine accept a regular notebook hard drive upgrade? Does it look like the XP home would accept upgrade to Pro? The fluff I'm reading on the reviewer sites doesn't really answer what I want to know. Thanks for any assistance. ( My personal best answer would be for him to wait! )
Wait.
by R. Proffitt
- 10/4/08 6:18 PM
In reply to: Has anyone actually bought a Dell Mini Nine? by tcantrelln
Yes, please wait. I have not bought such a thing since RSN (see google) the dual core ATOM (smasher?) versions will be out. And you bet they will be at or about the same price as what you see today.
Think over what these things are. They are not laptop replacements. They are what they are. Big PDAs.
-> Look up the Palm Folio. It crashed coming out of the gate for a very good reason. Look at the Tablet PC success (not.)
Bob
Thanks-I hadn't seen that about dual core
by tcantrelln - 10/5/08 3:31 AM In reply to: Wait. by R. Proffitt
He's bad to want the latest toy, wish there was a Mall Kiosk somewhere to send him to and get a couple of hours hands-on. Maybe waiting for dual core will help put him off.
Won't take notebook hard drive upgrade
by mostlyharmless22 - 10/5/08 1:34 PM In reply to: Has anyone actually bought a Dell Mini Nine? by tcantrellnUnfortunately, the SSD in these is shorter than SSD for regular notebooks so the answer to that is no, it won't accept a regular notebook hard drive upgrade. There are larger SSDs available that will fit it though. The best solution is not to use the SSD for anything but programs and have either an external hard drive or a large SDHC for saving files to.
Take it from me, you can wait and wait and wait for the next better version to come out and you still will never stay ahead of it. I bought an Eee 701 and within days heard they were coming out with the 8.9" screens so I sold it and waited for that. I missed it terribly too because I accompany my father to a lot of doctor appointments and with the 701 I could check my e-mail using the clinics' free wireless. I planned to buy the Eee 900 (in spite of Asus horrible technical support) but by the time that came out they talking about the 901 with the Atom processor so I waited for that. Then Dell was coming out with one and I waited for that. I started to wait for the Dell with the WWAN built in but I finally decided enough is enough. I'm glad I waited for Dell but I've waited the better part of a year for something I will probably replace in a couple of years anyway.
Let your boss enjoy his toy. I know I'll enjoy mine!
Tell me about the Dell.
by tcantrelln - 10/5/08 3:35 PM In reply to: Won't take notebook hard drive upgrade by mostlyharmless22Did you get XP home? Does the case finger smudge as badly as it might? The idea of the base SSD then replace it with something more useable down the road is an idea I hadn't thought of. I did get to play with an Acer for about fifteen minutes and am just about to try and change his mind. Except for the nightmare stories that rival or exceed Asus Tech support.
Smudging
by mostlyharmless22 - 10/5/08 4:31 PM In reply to: Tell me about the Dell. by tcantrellnFrom what I've heard, the black case smudges like crazy but you can always get a skin to protect it. I ordered white which will likely show filth more than black but who's going to be filthy working with their Mini? Mine isn't actually here yet but I had enough hands on with the 701 to know I'm going to enjoy it and everyone I've chatted with that has theirs in hand loves it.
The keys on my Eee were too small and Dell has tried to remedy that by changing up the keyboard a bit which I consider to be genius but I'll have to have hands on before I'm sure. The screen on the Eee was a bit too small so the 8.9" should be better. I did order XP Home on it because that's what I'm used to working with. The Eee I had was Linux and I hated the version they used. My daughter's Dell laptop has Ubuntu and she and my husband both swear by it but I want to run some of the same software I run on my XP desktop.
Big decider for me going with Dell was their warranty and knowing that Dell will actually honor theirs. I extended the warranty so I won't have to worry about it going bad for a couple of years. With the Eee, I'd try to ask questions of their technical support and after a day or so they'd just close the case without answering the question. That's just like hanging up on someone. Dell rocks as far as warranty support.
Sanity prevails (for the moment)
by tcantrelln - 10/8/08 6:03 AM In reply to: Smudging by mostlyharmless22A buddy of the boss described his reading up on Mini's and how hot they ran. When I thought about this I realized that getting some thing the weight of the Mini 9, warming it to the described temps and then having the boss sit with it on his thigh for ten minutes might be a good idea. YES! Knocked it out of the ball park. Thank you Mister Heat Gun and IR thermometer. It never occurred to me to bring the Temperature issue up. Then again, maybe I should have let him get one-get tired of it-and I'd have a new toy to gather dust on the bench.
Warming to the described temps??
by mostlyharmless22 - 10/8/08 12:10 PM In reply to: Sanity prevails (for the moment) by tcantrellnI don't know where your friend did his reading but everyone I've read who has one of these says they stay cooler than a lot of larger laptops. They are passively cooled. Since they don't have a mechanical hard drive, they stay much cooler. I don't think temperature is going to be an issue at all. I will have mine by Monday and I'll post again to clarify that.
Article on -compreviews.about.com/od/netbooks/gr/InspironMin
by tcantrelln - 10/8/08 3:47 PM In reply to: Warming to the described temps?? by mostlyharmless22Described " The downside to this is that the case of the Mini 9 does get hotter than many other competing netbooks on the market. While it is quite warm, it doesn't get too hot to be unusable in ones lap."
And others.
Heat not an issue...
by mostlyharmless22 - 10/11/08 8:39 PM In reply to: Article on -compreviews.about.com/od/netbooks/gr/InspironMin by tcantrellnJust scan these two forums. A lot of info here from many different sources.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=294926
http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/index.php
I bought one!
by scamdata - 10/9/08 9:37 PM In reply to: Has anyone actually bought a Dell Mini Nine? by tcantrellnI will try to answer all the questions here!
Hi there, I bought my dell 910 from office works on the 6/10/08, when I spoke to the sales rep at office works, he told me "it has a 120gb hdd", this was an out right lie, just to get them of the shelf!
So be warnned! I have the 15gb SSD. thats it, i was told after i got home its my fault, and that a refund or exchange is never going to hapen. So now i am stuck with it.
I am not unhappy with the Dell PDA but would of liked not to be lied to. I had a few acer aspire one's for a few weeks but they all died from cpu overheating. they are great for there HDD and HDD size but are not worth the risk of it blowing up after your 1 year warranty is through! My EEE went in the bin yesterday as the lcd died, was not worth fixing at $400.00 hay. My dell 910 shows all finger prints inside and out! the SSD is upgradeable, but dell do not recomend doing it at all! They do not at all, take standard IDE Drives unlike acer one. The WWAN card slot is not there at all. You can change your wifi card to a 3g card, but it must have the sim slot on the card. My Dell 910 runs XP Pro and Mac OS 10.5 "intel" but this is on two different SSD'S. Dell say 2gig ram works great but unless installed by them voids all warranty, mine loves it and it boost my video as well. XP Pro can make some applications hang like, Paint Shop Pro, but plays GTA games play fine. So its little things that you have to look at. The bluetooth can be hacked into without passkeys, if you use the Dell BT software! Screen res is 800 x 600 or 1024 x 600, both realy suck, but the Dell Mini is not designed for massive games and stuff. The WIFI works nearly 200 meters when all power save options are turned off, but chews battery power fast 2 hours instead of 4. The battery on mine last around 5 hours not four like described but not expecting it to last as long. The Dell mini uses a battery charging system that uses only AC when pluged in, and stops charging when the battery is full, unlike older Dell's. There is a drive letter problem when using both external HDD and DVD rom at same time, this is easy to fix, just change the DVD to drive p: in the win control panel. This proplem will also occur when you insert an SD while the DVD is also pluged in, Change the SD Drive letter to m:. this will solve any drive letter problems you may have. this is all i can think of right now, if i have missed anything or you want to know more just ask me and i will tell you, If i dont know i will find the info els were thanks....
Scamdata - Cooking with gas!
Dell Mini Heat
by scamdata - 10/9/08 10:05 PM In reply to: I bought one! by scamdataHi there i forgot to mention, after 9 hours of "Empire Earth", pluged in and on my lap, The base temp was only 43DC, thats hot but after 9 hours of constant CPU motion thats still rather low in comparison to an IDE mini. My Acer one's did not even pass the 3 hour mark, without freezing up or turning off. When the power light comes on and will not boot, and there is no HHD sound then either your HDD or CPU is dead! The Dell uses a series of tones. "Warrning" if your usb device does not have enought power to operate, DO NOT USE POWER PACKS THAT ADD VOLTAGE TO USB DEVICES VIA USB LEADS, THIS WILL KILL YOUR MOTHER BOARD AND VOID YOUR WARRANTY INSTANTLY! TRUST ME I KNOW! It is ok to use backpacks with non usb power pack i.e. 4 - 8 pin round connectors. these add the correct voltage direct to the drive and does not send the voltage back through the usb leads to your Mini.
Take it back
by 3rdalbum - 10/11/08 9:33 AM In reply to: I bought one! by scamdata@scamdata: If the sales rep gave you the wrong information, then it's *NOT* your fault and you have the right to a full refund. Stamp your feet about it.
Can I just ask: What on earth do you need a 120 gigabyte HDD for in a netbook? I'm having trouble understanding why people want to run an obsolete desktop Windows operating system on a netbook rather than something up-to-date that's been designed for these machines; but a 15 gigabyte SSD is plenty big enough for the sorts of things you'd do on a netbook. Surely?
Why do people over fill the washer? To save time reloading!
by scamdata - 10/11/08 5:52 PM In reply to: Take it back by 3rdalbumWell i had used all but 1 gig within 10 hours of windows updates, i suggest to turn it off, but at the same time never recomend doing it. Acer knew that this would be a problem thus the big 120 HDD! As you know there mp3's these days have grown larger for some reason and its fun to see how much music you can fit on your mobile device. to those who have read these last few post's these dell minis are not designed to replace any computer, but to add to your collection. These are perfect on a network, I have a small office of 10 staff, all have a dell mini on there desk, and we use a mac server. Why use a mac and not windows? Simple, the dell mini's windows has been downsized, there fore missing some services. And our G5 server boots in 45 seconds, were our dell P4 takes 8 mins. Now after all this over load, here is how we use them at scamdata, Our server has a massive hdd that is partioned, one for each mini, we also use a dvd stack with 5 dvd drives. All wireless 100mb. @ scamdata all we do is read the emails look at our database and send the customer a reply. So we just use them for email and database functions. We just like to test drive them all, and see what new additions or subtructions they have to offer. When i asked an Acer worker last week, why a 120 gig hdd? why not an SSD? he replied "DVD's and Windows Updates!" So if you have a small SSD then i would recomend setting your automatic updates to show you what it wants to install, this way you can select how much Windows trash you wish to instal. @ scamdata our computers are on 24 - 7, in our office so a low voltage solution with minimum waste is always great to have. i would not recomend, for people at home to leave them turned on and pluged in like we do tho. If you are going to do this take off the battery!
dell mini 9 a pda? i don't think so...
by palawan888 - 10/15/08 12:00 AM In reply to: Has anyone actually bought a Dell Mini Nine? by tcantrellnDell mini 9 a PDA???
i bought a dell mini 9 - 1gb ram, 16gb ssd, 1.3mp webcam, no bt, winxp home edition and just received it last thursday. originally, i ordered it from the dell website but had to cancel because it would have taken about a month, and i found a seller on ebay selling it for about the same price, brand new.
i spent some time this past weekend to move a bunch of stuff from my full-sized notebook computer dell latitude d610.
when i got the dell mini 9, i noticed that the c: drive was compressed, i uncompressed it, canceled the process and manually uncompressed the folders c:\windows and the c:\program files. i then uninstalled all the junk that came preinstalled (ms works, av sw, etc.), downloaded the windows updates, and installed, office xp pro (without access and info live?), yahoo messenger, cboe toolbox, skype, pokerstars, steganos anonym and safe, mcafee enterprise, juniper vpn client (java web-based), firefox (with add ons), vlc, divx codec. maybe an item or two i forgot to mention.
also, when i ran 5 tabbed windows on firefox, it said virtual memory was low, so checked the settings on my computer (properties) and it was set to 200mb. i adjusted it to 1.5x my ram size (1.5gb)...
even after all that, i still have over 7gb left on my c: drive.
i do have a 320gb wd my passport usb external hard drive, so all my stuff, pics, media files, etc, that take a lot of space are there. i also have an 8gb sdhc memory in the dell mini 9 card reader slot which i don't plan to take out. i moved c:\i386 and c:\dell to the sdhc memory.
everyday, i have about 7-8 tabbed windows on firefox opened which sounds weird, but one is for yahoo mail, one for finance.yahoo.com, one for gmail, one for cme futures, (during market hours) about 3 for real-time stock quotes list (stock symbols and option symbols - 10 items per window), one for forum watching, one for commodities - switching between energy commodities and agricultural/metals, one for general web browsing. eight tabbed windows on firefox is the limit (for me) before it starts to have to scroll sideways.
i also have 3 tabbed windows on ie for ted spread, libor rates, usb swap spread plus a window to start the java-based web chat for stocks. yahoo messenger is always running. skype is also running (for sms messaging to international cell phones, cheaper than using t-mobile international sms). i actually use yahoo messenger for voip international calls as the rates are better than skype. i also use yahoo messenger for web chat with my fiance who has a lenovo s10 netbook.
with the juniper vpn client, i can connect to work, even remote desktop to my office pc (or servers) and have access to virtually all of the computer resources at work.
i trade stock options and play real money on pokerstars, so if this is not reliable for those activities, i wouldn't use it.
so, if all pda's can do all of that, then i suppose a dell mini 9 is just a pda...
[btw, i typed all of these on my dell mini 9 eventhough my dell latitude d610 is just a few feet away. pretty used to the keyboard now, after spending some time with it last weekend. can't wait for my verizon card to be converted to usb so i can use it on this. the dell d610 will probably stay in my laptop bag most of the time while i have my dell mini 9 plus verizon card with me in my messenger bag wherever i go]
regards, palawan-dude
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
 |
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
