Dell Mini Notebooks
Since the mini notebook market just keeps growing and growing, manufacturers have to come up with notebooks that will keep them in business. People are very picky when they choose a notebook and some want to get powerful notebooks for a lower price. Dell has always been an important manufacturer in the computer business offering good products at competitive prices. It has done it so far for computers, laptops and now it’s doing it for the Dell mini notebooks.
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The Dell Mini 10 is probably the most popular mini notebook that Dell has to offer. For $279.00 you can buy it directly from Dell’s website which allows you to customize your own model and add the specs you want. You can choose between 6 different storage capacities and even between two different batteries: a 3-cell and a 6-cell. The unit reviewed is worth about $450 because it has better specs than the standard available ones. It is a thin, light, and elegant mini notebook which makes it very appealing to the eyes of the customer. If you have never seen a Mini 10 but you’ve seen a Mini 9 or Mini 12, note that the design has pretty much the same pattern. You have the glossy black lid which is kind of a fingerprint magnet but we are already getting used to this feature in most notebooks. Leave it to Dell to spoil us again with another 5 colors available for this notebook. For an extra $30 you can get your Mini 10 in red, blue, white, pink and green. When you lift the lid you will find a nice black keyboard combined with a silver palm rest.
It weighs 2.6 pounds and this makes it ideal to carry around in your bag, backpack or purse. Students that attend classes where you need to take a lot of notes can easily go around with this light mini notebook all day and it won’t even bother them. The size of the keyboard is definitely nothing to complain about. The black matte keys reminded me of some Toshiba Satellite models which have similar keys. They are very pleasant to type on even if your hands are a bit sweaty. The keys offer good feedback and the keyboard was stretched all the way to the edges of the notebook to get bigger keys. One thing we didn’t appreciate and we think some of you won’t appreciate it either is the fact that the left and right mouse buttons have been integrated into the touchpad. If you pay attention, you will notice the marks on the lower corners of the touchpad. If you normally used your thumb to press the left button, you are going to have some troubles here. The touchpad will also recognize multi touch gestures and this may come in handy to some of you. However, nothing can really compensate with the lack of our traditional left and right mouse button. Well, nothing except an external mouse.
The 10.1 inch display has a 1024 x 576 pixel resolution which is a bit lower than what you can find on other 10.1 notebooks. To our surprise, even if the screen is kind of glossy, there were no severe problems with the horizontal and vertical viewing angles. Above the display you will notice the 1.3 mega pixel webcam. To get the best quality out of the images, we recommend you use the Skype video chat program. Under the front edge of this mini notebook you can find the location of the stereo speakers which aren’t quite impressive but you can still get some decent sound especially if you are watching a movie and this Dell mini notebook is somewhere near you. The Mini 10 uses an Intel Atom Z530 Silverthrone processor. 1 GB of RAM means that Windows XP is the most suitable operating system for this notebook.
160 GB of disk storage was our option for this mini notebook but there are different HDDs with lower capacities. The Intel GMA 500 with 64 MB of video memory does not provide anything special. Even if the components are nothing to brag about, this mini notebook will definitely come in handy when you are in need of a small computer to check your e-mail, do some web surfing and even watch a good movie. Mozilla Firefox, our default web browser had no trouble when launching and neither did Windows Media Player. You can run multiple applications like video chat programs, web surfing applications and even a document editing program. The number of ports and connections is fair enough if you consider the cramped space of this mini notebook. You have 3 USB ports, an Ethernet port, a Kensington lock slot, a HDMI out, a 3-in-1 card reader plus the regular headphones and microphone jacks. One cool feature is the integrated Bluetooth which make file transfer a bit easier. Some people may be annoyed by the fact that there is no VGA port but if you plan on connecting the projector for presentation, we recommend you buy a bigger laptop, one 100% suitable for office use. There is also no optical drive for obvious space reasons but you can always buy an external one and attach it via the USB port.
We didn’t notice any serious heating problems with the Dell Inspiron Mini 10. The keyboard and touchpad will not heat up in any disturbing way. After considerable hours of usage, the heat will rise a bit above the room temperature. Since the most important part of all with these mini notebooks is how much you can rely on it to stay turned on when you are away from a power outlet, we have to disappoint you by saying that the 3-cell battery will only last about 2 hours and 40 minutes.
We strongly recommend you consider purchasing the 6-cell battery because it can provide up to 5 hours of notebook usage. You will need all the battery power you can get especially if you are a frequent traveler and need a notebook you can rely on.
