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:
- I upgraded the base XP Home to XP Professional SP3.
- Uncompressed the hard disk to improve performance.
- Installed Microsoft Office 2007 so I would have Outlook, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint for school.
- Turned off the hibernate option to same myself 1 GB of hard disk space.
I must say that I'm impressed. I was a little worried after running across an Acer 901, that the keyboard would be too small for my large hands, but luckily, Dell moved a few less frequented keys around to make room for a larger set of alphabet keys. It's just the right size to keep the laptop small, but still allow for almost the same experience as a regular keyboard.
Battery life is actually quite astonishing. I've managed 3 times already this week to go almost 4 hours on a single charge (and that's going until 10% at which point the system beeps at you every 30ish seconds letting you know the battery will die soon!). The adapter is also small enough to comfortably fit into my pocket, so I'm really never far from being able to charge it if I need to.
More pictures:
