Thoughts on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9

First, holy crap! The box was the size of my phone book, seriously - a tiny, tiny bit longer, but that’s it. Weight is fantastic for travel.

Second, it’s pretty - I have the black and it just looks good.

Screen: really well lit - one of my coworkers is considering one after just seeing mine and noticing how easy it is to read it is. Well lit and wide - things look right.

Wireless - as easy as any other to pop right onto my home wireless, the university access and the one at the Phoenix airport (where I am at the moment).

Keyboard - this is where I had my most worries. I’d seen the ASUS eee’s and hadn’t been impressed with them - they were just a little too small for my fingers. This one? Dell did a good job with this. As long as I get my fingers on the right home keys, I’m good to type as normal. Very pleased with it.

I got the 1 G memory, 16 G hard drive, with XP and I think it will have been worth it - for what I want it for (work and personal travel and the like), XP should make hooking up to wireless networks fairly seamless, while I wasn’t sure about Linux (think it probably would be ok, but I went with the easy for this one.).

Because my flight's getting ready to start boarding, I'll just link to my photos for now

I'm sure after this trip I may have some updates with drawbacks, and will update then.