Maximum PC

The long rumored, long awaited "Eee PC Killer" from Dell, now called the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, is now available...

http://www.topnewsblog.info/tblog_10917.htm

I looked at the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, and bought the ASUS Eee PC 901 20G

The Asus has Tri-mode Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n), the Dell stops at 802.11g
The Dell SSD has been tested and found slower than the Asus SSD.

Finally, and most importantly the Asus has an excellent user community at eeeuser.com.
Want help with the Asus Linux version?
Want to try another Linux distro?
Want to nLite WinXP to your Asus?
Bigger SSD - Touchscreen?
Somebody has done it at eeeuser.com

The Dell has nowhere near the enthusiast following.

Wouldn't that make sense? It did come out a while ago, while the Mini9 is just being released. I bet similar things will be able to be done to it.

AJ

It would make sense AJ at first glance. Until one remembers that the typical Dell end user doesn't mod or change much at all.
Time will tell. Let's keep an eye on the Inspiron and see.

Touché.

AJ

changing the ssd to a 32gig or possibly a 64 gig
32GB SSD on Dell Mini Inspiron 9

a gps locater installed
Dell Mini 9 gets snug little GPS hack

this review says that it takes standard notebook ddr2 ram and standard wireless mini cards so upgrading it to 2gigs of ram and wireless n seem like no problem.

I'm still on the fence though about this purchase due to the odd placement of the f-keys. How much graphics power does this thing have? Maybe Maximum PC could upgrade one to 2 gigs of ram, a 64 gig ssd, and wireless n then send it to me for free so I could try it out. =D

Graphics power on a netbook?



No.

i figured it wouldn't have much graphics power. I would be using it for school doing mostly word processing/powerpoint but I was wondering if it would stream you tube or mp4 videos just fine or if it would play an older(!) game like the 1 player counterstrike condition zero or maybe even an mmo like guildwars. Then again playing a game on such a small screen might not be so great.

Decoding DVDs will stress this system .. It'll do it, but might choke on HD formats.

Gaming is a big NO.

maybe some old 3d games like Deus ex or age of mythology could run on low settings.

or The Realm

I am sure Tetris will run just fine.

Gaming wise, I think Bejeweled would run just fine. Quake 3 would run alright on this thing with that small screen resolution. But 1024X600 may not be supported by many games out there, even if the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 drivers support it. The Integrated graphics on this thing is about on par with a 6600GT for fill rates and memory bandwidth.

Flash based games, video streaming, DVD video, all of those should play just fine. The product brief doesn't say anything about off loading HiDef deconding from the CPU, so a Blu-ray movie would probably push the CPU.

It's a great little office app/internet browsing computer. But I wouldn't expect too much out of it. After all, it's not meant to be a gaming platform in the least.

I doubt it very very much.

I am definitely gonna hold off on this purchase. I will wait another 1-2 months to buy a 13 or 15 inch gaming laptop.

thing is the mini is not a gaming laptop, think of it more like a Personal Data Troll you strap to your wrist to look up info or write documents on the go.

you know like in sci-fi movies, people dont game on their Wrist-puter they do work and mapquesting

Before I even turned the Mini 9 on for the first time, I'd upgraded the RAM to 2gb. Very simple to do. If I had the money for the 64gb SSD, I'd have one of those installed by now as well.

As for gaming, with the help of an external hard drive for storage I have gotten World of Warcraft to not only install, but run. It's a bit choppy running through the gathering areas of major cities, but seems completely playable running around killing things in the wilderness. Mind you, this is at the lowest graphics settings possible.

And while it may not appeal to everyone, I'm impressed with the power and capabilities of this little unit. The user community may not be adopting it quite as fast as the Eee, but I'm impressed with what I've been able to do with the device so far. (Right now, I have OSX installed, and am playing around with that. Next week, Ubuntu.)

My only major complaint is with the keyboard layout. While I appreciate the size of the keys, for some reason the '/" key has been moved to a bizarre location.

Now if only I could get someone to give me an Aspire One, Wind, and Eee 900 so I can compare units side by side. (My Eee 700 is sitting on a shelf, blown away by the Mini 9.)

My Mini 9 should be shipped on Thursday. I would think it should be able to play a few older games just fine. I plan on playing starcraft on it and maybe trying Half-Life 2 to see if it'll run, though it will be more of a long bus trip anime box than anything else. I chose the mini 9 over the aspire because it and most of the current netbooks seemed to have a cheesy plasticy construction. My last few Dell notebooks really took a beating and held up pretty well. (my 9100 and my e1705 were rebuilt more than a few times for Artic Silver 5 replacement, did that void my warranty? lol) From what I can tell the mini 9 at least looks as if its built better than the other netbooks I've played with, I guess we'll see.
Also, I'm not the typical Dell end user just to clarify with fnbrowning lol.
Side note: Pleased to see that Packard Bell is still around and hope their netbooks make it stateside (and don't suck). Remembering my 486sx (without the math coprocesssor chip lol) brings back memories of joy and long sessions of Chex Quest!

Please do a review comparing the mini 9 to the Aspire! Interested to see the results.

think an EEE or an equivilent could run somthing like CS 1.6?

I would think so, I played CS 1.6 on a 400mhz Pentium 2 with 128MB Ram
and no 3D acceleration.