Yay for dell mini 9 notebook

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eljefino

eljefino

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Runs ubuntu. Keyboard is goofy but can still touch type. Wifi antenna is strong; gets the neighbors too. Followed a slickdeals.net link. May still be active. I got the small business discount, friends of dell discount etc by following the link. Had to "invent" a business, Arctic Camel Trading Co, LOL!

Oddly when one buys a dell netbook they take a week to "build" it. They give you a whole list of parts that make it up.

This one has 1 GB ram and a 4GB solid state hard disk that seems compressed as it reports 6.5 GB or so of capacity. 1024x600 screen, wide enough for mori's photos.

Agg, this goofy keyboard has the quotes and apostrophe in odd places. I like to passively aggressively "air quote" and it's slowing me down. There is also an unwanted "crtl v" function.
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Can't remember my BITOG login so I copied my firefox profile full of cookies etc over.
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Wife has an iPod touch that is also great for wifi mooching but I like that I can get stuff in and out on a jump drive, reformat, run x86 stuff (people run Mac OS on these!) yadda yadda. FWIW this was cheaper than another iPod touch.
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BTW did I mention it's tiny? Easily one epic sized laptop cut down the middle.
 
I have been looking for a good source of Arctic Camels.
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I just gave my Eee PC 900A to someone. It was just too small. Sounds like your Dell mini will work for your needs.
 
I got a 4 GB USB jump drive at big lots; ubuntu live CDs come with a utility that makes bootable USB editions of same from which one can install.

Thing came with a nice enough paper manual full of XP references plus a 2nd one explaining "here's how it works in Ubuntu." Also has an "airplane mode" that turns off wifi and bluetooth and saves battery power thru less CPU power.

My kill a watt reports 11-15 watts, but is hard to say if battery is influencing.
 
I got my Dell laptop with Dells proprietary N card inside right as they started selling the same laptop with Intells N card.I think it was $30 to upgrade from Dells b/g Wifi card to their N card and another $100 to upgrade to Intells N card. To be honest I think the Dell N card is better. I can get signals when no one else can and I am always the one with the best signal and band with!I go to college so I am around a lot of computer and few of them are Dells. If I remember right it has Brodcoms chip set in it but the board was designed I guess by Dell useing broadcoms chipset or was designed for them. My point is that the Dell N card is faster and more reliable then the Intell N card and it is cheaper so anyone getting a deal do not think you need to pay extra for the intell N card you do not!Often I am the only one in an area that can get a signal. I can sit in the parking lot outside a local library running a G wifi that is sitting behind the counter of the librarians desk a good 60 feet away not counting the 3 feet of brick and get great signal.

I do not know if it is the chip set on the Intell N cards that suck or their antenna design and placement or what but they are not the performer everyone would think they are! Dell definately has a good N card and reliable OEM componets. I have had my laptop for a few years and not once has it had any issues or blue screens of death etc....In fact I got one of the last main stream full size laptops with XP on it. Linx is great but really XP was probably the best thing ever at the end. I ran XP64 for along time on my desk top at home and work station and it was so much better then Vista. XP with 2 GB or ram is like vista running 16GMB of ram!

I too had to make up a fake company name because i went through Vostro which is Dells business side. When I got my laptop a few years ago maybe 3 years. XP,2GB Ram,N card, top shelf DVD-ROM/Ram CD.....,LG screen,60GB hard drive, two large capacity batteries, N card WIFI, 3 year on site warranty plus shipping and tax's for $585 oh and I went AMD so it is 3Ghz dual core.....3 years ago that was kick but......The fact that it has XP means all my old software that will not work on my Vista desk top still works! It is still faster at doing work related stuff then any of the vista machines I run into! Oh and I have an two open slots one pci and I cannot recall the other for expansion internally so if I wanted to run a dedicated video card I can. My point is at the time if I had gotten that set up through Dell's non business side it would ahve been $1000-$1500. The only thing it did not come with that I wish it had was the latest sockets for HD outputs.

Dell does not get taken seriously I do not think but they still make a great product if youc an find a way not to buy retail! Retail they are over priced!
 
Guys, when you buy from Dell business, you can just put your own name under company name. They don't care, they don't check. They just want your money..

They only check if you ask for tax exempt status, then you need to fax in your tax id.

As for the external DVD drive, just buy one from newegg. I'm sure Dells offering is way overpriced.

I would upgrade the ram to 2gb. I think those Atom processors are limited to 2gb anyways.

Should be a decent computer, I would have to have one with the 10 inch screen, the 8 inch is a little too small.

My latest dell business purchase (from slickdeals also) was a loaded up dual core intel desktop, with a 24 inch lcd monitor. It was around $400. A few bucks for a HDMI PCi Express card, and 4gb of ram, and a dvd burner made it into a great PC! I've still got under 500 into it..
 
Yes the Dell mini9 is a good machine. Personally I ditched Dell's 8.04 and installed 9.04 Netbook Remix. Better interface and some new features. Why waste money on a CD drive? You can buy a $5 flash drive and use that to load Ubuntu if you want.

The keyboard takes some getting used to, but is usable IMO. You can remap the keys and switch them to fix the ' key, but I just got used to it.
 
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