Time to join the Windows Home Server crowd. After hearing/reading about all of the awesome features in WHS, and, with a little birthday money in my pocket, I decided it was time to build a Home Server. Requirements: Silent! I don’t want a 747 during take-off in my office! I want to display the...

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I just wanted to talk briefly about my recent acquisition of a netbook, their benefits, and which one(s) to choose if you're in the market.

Personally, I wanted something very small, but something that still retained the overall feel of a notebook. PDA's and other UMPC's are becoming more and more available, but they still lack certain key features that kept me from jumping on them.

1. No physical keyboard: While my iPhone doesn't have a physical keyboard, I don't do serious typing on it, so no real need for it. If I'm to take notes on the device, write blog posts, and chat with friends and family, a keyboard is a necessity unless I want to waste lots of time.
2. Too low of a resolution: Although most now do a good job of scaling websites and images down to fit the screen, there is still a significant amount of searching on a page to find the info I want. With netbooks, the horizontal resolution is almost guaranteed to be 1024 pixels. Since most websites (or at least the ones who've put any thought about their end-users into it) are based on a 1024 pixel width or less, there is absolutely no side-to-side scrolling.
3. Fragile Feel: This isn't to say I'm afraid of breaking my new Dell Mini 9, but with a PDA's having an exposed screen, I feel like I'm just going to break the device. With the universal "laptop" design, you still close the lid, which lets you know carrying the device around in a backpack, or large pocket will most likely not break or damage anything.

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So as some, but most of you don't know, I sold my Macbook a few weeks back. I decided that even though I enjoyed the OS X experience, my current field of work and school pretty much required me to have a Windows based machine. However, I really wanted to go smaller, to keep weight down, and maintain this sort of "minimalist" mood I'm in lately. (Basically I'm in this "keep everything clean and neat" state-of-mind.) So, after having sold the Macbook, and depositing the money from it, I decided the newly released Dell Mini 9 looked right up my alley.

Upgrades:

• I went with the 16GB drive knowing I would be installing a few applications, and needed as much disk space as I could get.
• I also added Bluetooth to reduce the number of "dongles" sticking out of the USB ports while I was using it.
• 1.3MP webcam, because having the camera on the Macbook made me realize just how handy they can be.

After waiting two weeks for the order, the Dell Mini 9 finally arrived at my house, and I set off to get it setup with what I needed for school and home leisure use:

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