I've ordered a Dell Mini 9


Back in early October of 2005, I ordered my current laptop, a Toshiba A75-S213 (P4 3.33GHz, 1GB RAM, 100 GB HD, Windows XP Pro, 15.4" display, weight: 7.9 pounds, battery life: 1 hr if lucky). And I purchased a 3 year warranty. The extended warranty expired 4 months ago, so the laptop is starting to die. Since I have a laptop from work, and I've got a desktop machine that I'm rehabilitating, I decided to get a machine that would meet my needs when travelling (not really all that much travel), and more importantly allow me to sit in the family room or outside with Shirley as we each geek away ...without the blasted machine dying on me due to its poor battery life or its advanced age.

So I decided to research netbooks - the drastically shrunken laptops that have become the rage. Among my requirements: it had to be lightweight, quick to startup, silent, and I did not want to pay for MS Windows, since the machine was going to run Ubuntu. Microsoft prevents a netbook Windows system from using more than 1GB of RAM, so I ideally wanted a system that came preinstalled with Ubuntu and that would allow me to have more RAM. The Dell Mini gets great reviews and meets all of my requirements. I was hoping to spend less than I did - especially since the base price of the Mini is US$259. After popping on a 64GB solid state hard drive (US$150), portable CD/DVD (US$80), bumping the stock 512MB of RAM up to 2GB (US$75), springing for a 1.3M pixel webcam (US$25), and electing to purchase a 2 year extended warranty (US$39) ...with tax and shipping the grand total came in at US$620 (for those doing the math, a program through my employer gave me a small discount, so the $620 total is less than what it would have been otherwise). Given that I paid US$1415 for the Toshiba over 3 years ago, the $620 is OK!

The weirdest thing will probably be getting used to the difference in size, weight, and noise. The pic here shows my current Toshiba monster of a laptop. The paper on top of it is the size of the Dell Mini :) ...quite a difference. The mini, of course has a much smaller screen, but since I don't plan to do a lot of development on there (I will do some), that will be fine. The mini is over 5.5 pounds lighter than the Toshiba, and it's battery should last about 4 hours, vs the 1 hour I get out of the Toshiba (when the Toshiba doesn't die even WITH remaining battery power).

I thought about this quite a while and read a fair amount before deciding to go for it. It should arrive in a couple of weeks. This will be interesting :)