The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is another in the current flood of ‘NetBooks’ that we have seen since the first Asus EeePC, so how does it fair in the current marketplace.
The Dell Inspiron Mini 9
What’s in the box?
Inspiron Mini 9
Charger
Recovery CD’s
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Specification:
| Processors | Intel® AtomTM Processor (1.6GHz, 512KB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB) |
| Operating System | Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition SP3 Ubuntu Linux 8.04 with custom Dell interface |
| Memory | 1GB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM |
| Chipset | Intel® 945PM / GS Express Chipset |
| Graphics | Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 950 |
| LCD Display | Glossy 8.9 inch LED display (1024X600) |
| Hard Drives | Up to 16GB configured with a Solid State drive. |
| Optical Drives | No optical drive available. |
| Ports | USB 2.0 (3) Integrated 10/100 LAN (RJ45) 15-pin VGA video connector Audio jacks (1-line out, 1 mic-in) 3-in-1 Media Card Reader AC adapter connector |
| Power | 4-cell 32WHr Li-Ion Battery |
| Camera | Integrated 1.3MP webcam |
| Wireless | 802.11g mini-card Bluetooth® Internal (2.0) mini-card |
|
Dimensions & Weight |
Width: 9.13" (232mm) Height: 1.07" (27.2mm) front / 1.25" (31.7mm) back Depth: 6.77" (172mm) Weight: Starting weight of 2.28 lbs. (1.035 kg)1(8.9" display, 4 cell battery). Weights will vary depending on configurations and manufacturing variability. |
An External tour
Front
Nothing much to see apart from the status LED’s on the left – these are white LED’s and whilst I found them a little distracting, it wasn’t too bad.
Right Side
From left to right we have Headphone Jack, Microphone Jack, USB port, VGA out and Ethernet.
Back
Nothing to see here apart from the back of the battery
Left Side
From left to right we have Kensington locking point, power port, 2 USB ports and a 3-in-1 card reader.
Opened
A fairly standard looking though slightly compressed keyboard layout, touchpad with mouse buttons, and a main power button.
At the top of the screen is a webcam and mic for web conferencing.
Highlights:
– Small and light
– This also applies to the power adapter
– Feels solid and well built
Lowlights:
– Default cover attracts fingerprints – can’t speak for other styles
– Glossy monitor
– Monitor view angle
– Desktop resize on every boot
– No F11 or F12
– Keyboard layout is going to take a little getting used to
– Gets a bit warm
– Collect and return warranty only
Review
As you unpack it, you realise that the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is a petite thing, surprisingly so if you’ve never handled a NetBook before – it looks for all the world like a laptop that’s shrunk after being washed on too high a heat.
The top cover is offered in a number of styles and colours on the Dell website – this one is decked out in the default piano black (which attracts fingerprints like you wouldn’t believe).
The Mini 9 is offered in both Linux and Windows XP flavours, with a mixture of hard drive sizes – this particular one came with Windows XP SP3 pre-installed on it’s 8GB drive, with the faster option graphics card (the Intel 945 Express).
As I first opened it up, I was impressed by how solid the construction felt – it felt like it could take life on the road quite easily.
The first boot was fast enough (sorry I didn’t time it), but the fact that I didn’t get frustrated by it is praise enough 😀
As it loads up it’s default programs at startup one of them is for the built in webcam, and it flashes the built in white led ‘light’ for a moment as it tests the hardware. Personally I found this a little disconcerting for my level of paranoia, so that soon got disabled so it would only think about using the camera when I wanted to.
The Mini 9 has an 8.9" 1024×600 wide screen LED monitor, which like so many laptops coming out at the moment, has a Glossy finish. I know that they say it helps with colour reproduction and deeper blacks, but personally I always find them far too shiny, especially outdoors – and for a device that’s designed to be taken on the go I find this a little frustrating. I know there are some people however who prefer the gloss finish, so I get’s it’s a question of preference.
One quirk I found during bootup is that the current drivers (or maybe Windows itself) seems to think that the monitor is 800×600 until Windows is finished loading, at which point it corrects itself to 1024×600. Whilst this doesn’t seem like that big a deal it does mean that Windows reorganises the icons on your desktop every boot. I’m sure that this is something that can be fixed with future drivers, but for the moment it was frustrating to have to work out where you new icons had been placed every time you reboot the machine.
This Mini 9 shipped with anti-virus installed and was pretty up to date on the windows update side of things (at time of arrival), so out of the box you at least have a fighting chance of keeping your system safe.
As the primary use of a NetBook is browsing the web I thought I connect and see how the Mini 9 handled it. After connecting with the wifi I was soon browsing the web.
At this point I started to realise that 1024×600 is not a lot of real-estate for a monitor, you really want to be able to minimise toolbars and the like, and when web browsing on smaller monitors I usually prefer to go to full-screen mode by pressing F11.
Ah.
There’s no F11 on the keyboard.
At this point I’ll digress for a moment. Please bear with me.
The Mini 9 keyboard (and this is the UK keyboard I’m talking about) has a number of quirks, and one of them is that there is not F11 or F12. Another is that the F keys they do have (F1-F10) are placed over the middle rows of keys on the keyboard.
Additionally, the > and . key has been squashed horizontally, the backslash is now on the right hand side of the keyboard, as is the ` key.
What all this means is that you have to get used to the keyboard not only being more compact than normal, but also to the fact that some keys aren’t where you’d expect them to be and some are missing completely.
Fortunately the browser I was using (Firefox) has a menu option to allow me to go in and out of full-screen mode, not ideal, but at least the option is there. I’m not sure what people with apps that require F11 or F12 are supposed to do if there is no menu alternative.
Anyway back to the web browsing.
Once I’d gone into fullscreen mode the browsing experience was much more pleasant. Though still compact, at least now I could read long paragraphs in one screen and in general it was a lot more enjoyable – I can easily imagine people sitting out in a cafe in the summer checking news and blogging etc.
So now onto something slightly more processor intensive – music and video.
Every mp3 I threw at it was easily handled, nice smooth playback, so onto video.
I downloaded my preferred video player (MPlayerC) and some video codecs (ffdshow), stuck a copy of a converted DVD onto a memory stick (remember the Mini 9 has no optical drive), and started it up. Perfect playback first time, increased to full-screen and it continued to run smooth as butter. I could certainly see people using this to watch their converted DVD’s on the commute in the mornings.
One thing I’ve not mentioned up until now is the trackpad.
The trackpad is in it’s traditional place below the keyboard and it appears a though it’s sort of carved into the surface (there is no obvious edge between the two surfaces, just a slight bevel to recess the trackpad). It is very responsive, and whilst you have to get used to it’s petite size, it functions as you’d expect. When I was sitting down for a longer period with the Mini 9 I’d connect an external mouse for comfort, but the pad is perfectly functional, if a little small, for your on the go needs.
Having had web browsing, mp3 and video handling all pass with flying colours I thought I’d try something else that I’d likely use the Mini 9 for – image editing.
I installed my favourite art package and had a quick play with some existing images I had. And here we had the first real signs of the fact that we were dealing with a mobile processor. Things got slow and in some operations very slow. In the end I decided that whilst it was capable of getting there eventually, I couldn’t see myself using it at those speeds, so I dropped back out and crossed image editing of my list of things the Mini 9 can do easily.
I then started up an Office document (albeit I was using OpenOffice) and as long as I wasn’t trying to do anything too complex things were fine, though sometimes it took a moment or two to think about complex pages when moving around the document. Presentations where much the same story, simple stuff was fine, but if you got too complicated things started to slow down.
Like when web browsing, the other thing that was obvious in the other packages was that you had to be very selective about which toolbars you wanted on the screen all the time – the screen’s resolution meant that you’d want to have the bare minimum on the screen whilst you worked so that you could see more of your work space.
One thing that has to be said about the Atom chipset that these new NetBooks use is that that are very quiet – and I do mean very. If you are really making it work for long periods of time then the little fan will kick in to cool the CPU down a bit, but even when it’s on the fan is not that loud or annoying.
That said, after using the Mini 9 for a while, I was surprised by how warm the base was getting – warm enough that I’d place something between it and me when using it on my lap.
One other thing that I did come across when getting the review together is that the Dell warranty is Collect and Return only. Meaning that your Mini 9 has to go back to Dell if there is a problem, no on-site repairs. Again it’s a personal thing as to how much of a deal-breaker that is.
Conclusion
In general the term NetBook says it all really – these devices are intended, and best used, for browsing the web, playing music or watching videos.
Whilst the above review might come across as lots of negatives, they are mostly personal preferences not major problems. The only thing I’d say was a big annoyance was the lack of F11 and F12 keys. No matter the arrangement, they should be there somewhere.
If you can adapt to the compact nature (and layout) of the keyboard and full-screen your favourite web browser, then the Mini 9 is a solidly built device that I can see lots of people carrying around in the future.
Review by: Iain
Pocketnow have spotted a coming soon page from Microsoft that appears at first glance could be the new Windows Mobile Marketplace which was mentioned in passing at Mobile World Congress last month. The URL reveals a mobile formatted website which implies that the Marketplace may just be a website of applications and not a fully featured app store application. We really hope that this is not the case as a proper application store should be able to offer much more than a web page with at least intelligent app updates and much more really. It is early days and for now lets give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. Take a look for yourself at this link. http://client.marketplace.windowsmobile.com/
The latest msmobiles podcast is now available and it is a great listen as we spent over an hour talking with Eric Lin from HTC. We talked about a lot of topics including the 3.5mm headset omissions, universal charging, the Touch Diamond range, the new Diamond2 and Touch Pro2 and his views on Windows Mobile 6.5 and lots more. You can download the episode directly here, subscribe in iTunes or through the RSS feed.
Msmobiles spent the day yesterday taking a look around the CeBIT exhibition in Germany and have shared a video look around the HTC booth. Some observations, various models of HTC phones were presented, including HTC Touch Diamond, Touch Diamond2, HTC Touch HD, HTC Touch Pro, S740 as well as accessories for them and two phones powered by Google Android. Take a look at the video after the break and visit msmobiles for more information and pictures from the booth.
Continuing on with our Blackberry testing this week we have the Blackberry Storm 9500. Here in the UK the Storm is a Vodafone exclusive although if you hunt around enough you’ll find a few retailers offering it SIM-Free.
At the moment you can barely walk past a billboard without seeing a Vodafone advert presenting the ‘Purpose Built for Vodafone’ adverts for the Storm or the adverts on TV talking about the touchscreen technology.
The Blackberry Storm 9500 from Vodafone
On the face of it the Storm looks like a decent phone, it’s on the large side and it’s lack of buttons is quite striking. We’ll have the full Blackberry Storm review up online in a few weeks but we’ll leave you with the unboxing video for now.
Blackberry Storm specification:
- Dimensions: 112.5 x 62.2 x 13.95 mm
- Weight: 155g
- Battery Capacity: 1400 mAh
- Display: 480 x 360 pixels/3.25 inch
- Network: GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 (Quad-Band), WCDMA: 2100 HSDPA (Single-Band)
- Camera: 3.2 mega-pixels (auto-focus)
- Video: Video Recording supported formats: MP4, 3GP, H.264 & H.263
- Music: Supported formats: MP3, AAC, ACC+, eAAC+ & WMA
- Messaging: SMS, MMS (with video), E-mail (POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, MS Exchange, BlackBerry), Instant Messaging
- Memory: 1GB (internal)
- microSDHC (external)
- microUSB
- 3.5mm Audio Connector
- Bluetooth (2.0)
- Navigation: AGPS, BlackBerry Maps
Posted by: Matt
The other week I mentioned that I was looking for a way to geo-tag my photos and came across the QSTARZ BT-1000X gps data logger. Now that I’ve got my hands on this little GPS unit does it live up to my expectations and deliver a simple geo-tagging solution?
The QSTARZ BT-1000X data logger
What’s in the box?
The QSTARZ BT-1000X data logger gps unit, car charger, USB Sync/Charge cable, leather pouch/belt holder, manual and software CD-ROM.
QSTARZ BT-1000X GPS data logger specification:
- POI button: Record point of interesting by pushing the red button
- 32 channel: Base on MTK chipset solution, can trace signals for 32 satellites simultaneously. The fast position fix, cold start < 36 sec, hot start< 1 sec
- GPS Chip MTK GPS Module
- Frequency L1, 1575.42MHz
- Tracking -158 dBm
- Cold Start: 36 sec, average
- Warm Start: 33 sec, average
- Hot Start: 1 sec, average
- Reacquisition: < 1 sec.
- Bluetooth: V1.2 compliant (SPP profile)
- Class 2 (15 meters in open space)
- Frequency: 2.4~2.4835 GHz
- Power On/Off Slide switch
- Power Charge Mini USB
- NMEA-0183 (V3.01) – GGA, GSA,GSV, RMC(default); VTG, GLL(Optional), Baud rate 115200 bps, Data bit : 8, stop bit : 1(Default)
- 72.2 (L) X 46.5 (W) X 20 (H) mm
- Standard Fully Compliant with USB2.0
- Full – Speed 12Mbps
Looking around the device:
There isn’t a great deal to see to be honest, looking at the top/front there’s a small red button that’s used for marking waypoints or points of interest. Around this button you’ll find 3 LED’s that indicate when the unit is charging or needs charging, is connected via bluetooth and has a GPS signal.
QSTARZ BT-1000X LED display
On the right hand side of the unit there’s a single mini-USB connector that’s used to download/upload data as well as to charge the device.
QSTARZ BT-1000X right side
On the left hand side of the GPS unit is a three-position switch. There’s the obvious off position and then in the middle is the NAV mode. With the switch in this position the unit works like a regular external Bluetooth GPS receiver. Putting the switch in to the LOG position records the GPS position and time in to the units memory at give time intervals.
QSTARZ BT-1000X left side
There isn’t much more to be seen on the unit apart from a removable cover on the bottom which allows you to replace the battery.
Highlights:
- Fast acquisition
- Excellent reception, even indoors
- Long battery life
- Accuracy while moving
Lowlights:
- Software badly translated from Chinese to English
- Only PC drivers
- Accuracy while stationary
Review:
The QSTARZ BT-1000X comes in a neat and well presented box and has all the cables and software that you need to get up and running and it really doesn’t take long to get started.
First of all the battery has to be installed in the unit, this means simply removing the bottom cover and inserting the battery. According to the manual we’ll have to charge the battery for 16 hours the first time but as we can sync and charge at the same time we can set the unit up at the same time.
All of the software that you need to set up and use the QSTARZ BT-1000X is supplied on an 8cm CD-ROM. This is a bit of a problem for me (and quite a few people these days) as I have a laptop with a slot loading CD/DVD drive that cant take these small disks. So we have to go to another PC to copy the install files to the laptop. No big deal but worth considering.
On the disk we have three main items. First of all we have the software driver so that our PC will recognise the GPS unit, naturally we have to install this first and we need to make sure we complete the driver installation before we connect up the GPS. Once the driver is installed and the GPS connected Windows reports that a new GPS device is connected and working.
Next it’s time to install the software. First we install the Travel Recorder PC utility. This application is used to configure the GPS unit, upload the AGPS data and to download the recorded tracking data. Here we can also change the logging settings so that the unit logs the position every X seconds or based on movement, every X metres.
The first thing I did here was to upload the AGPS data to the GPS unit. This takes just a few seconds and the AGPS data is valid for 5 days. I’m not sure why it’s only 5 days as most other GPS units I have used have AGPS data for 7 days. This cant be changed though.
Turning the unit in to logging mode by moving the switch to log the GPS LED is initially solid orange, this means that the unit is on and looking for a signal. Within about 20 seconds the orange light begins to flash. The flashing orange means that the unit has a GPS fix and is logging data at the previously defined interval. The amount of time the unit takes to get a GPS fix is truly amazing – sitting indoors with the unit on the table and starting it from cold it will generally establish a fix in well under one minute.
The QSTARZ BT-1000X has an amazing reception, the bulk of the unit must be an antenna. Having use the unit for the past few weeks it’s actually more unusual for it not to have a GPS fix, I’ve been using it in the car, on the train, in the office and in each case, despite being either in my pocket or in my laptop bag the unit barely misses a beat. In fact it seems to be quite difficult to block this unit from picking up a GPS fix!
The battery life of this unit is also impressive. Leaving the unit switched on in log mode the battery easily lasts a couple of days. When the battery begins to run low the power LED flashes red but obviously you have to remember to check the unit to see this and because the unit just works and is pretty much trouble-free it’s easy to forget this.
The QSTARZ BT-1000X also has a dedicated NAV mode where it can be used as a ‘normal’ external Bluetooth GPS receiver. In NAV mode the unit pairs easily with your PDA and gives you the benefit of an extremely accurate and sensitive GPS unit. Sure there are plenty of mobile devices with built in GPS but show me one that can get a cold GPS fix in seconds and will work almost anywhere and have a battery life measured in days. Built in GPS units are poor in comparison.
One feature that is undocumented on the QSTARZ BT-1000X is that if you set up a Bluetooth partnership with your mobile then you can connect to the GPS even when it’s in LOG mode so you can use the logging feature and navigation feature at the same time. As I’ve been carrying the QSTARZ BT-1000X in my bag with it switched on all the time I’ve found this feature to be really useful – when I want to use Sat Nav on my mobile I simply turn on TomTom and because the GPS is already on and working and has a position fix I can start using the Sat Nav within seconds rather than waiting for the internal GPS to acquire a signal which in some cases can take several minutes. This is a handy feature but remember to set the Bluetooth partnership up with the unit in NAV mode as it’s not discoverable in LOG mode.
Software:
Apart from the device drivers there are two main software titles on the CD-Rom that comes with the unit.
The first is the GPS Travel Recorder Utility. In addition to being used to configure the GPS unit as I’ve already briefly mentioned, the Travel Recorder Utility is where you’ll download your GPS log data. There are a number of ways to use your GPS track data. You can display your tracks on a map thanks to the Google Maps plugin, you can export your track data in a number of formats so that you can use it with other software or you can use it to add geotagging data to your photographs.
It’s the geotagging that I was particularly interested in. Before you go ahead and use the unit and your camera you’ll want to make sure that the date and time is set correctly on your camera. The software uses the time stamp on the image in combination with the GPS track in order to work out where the photo was taken.
In practice the process is really simple – when you get back from taking all your photos you transfer them to a folder on your computer and then open up the Travel Recorder to download the GPS data. Once you have loaded your GPS track you simply point the software at the folder containing all of your photos and it will then go through them all looking at the times from the exif data and then work out where you were when the photo was taken. Having done this is will then show you the positions on the map. You also have the option of writing the GPS position data back to the EXIF of the Image file which is really handy if you are going to be using the photos in another application that supports geotagging such as iPhoto or Flickr.
The software even allows you to create funky webpages with maps and photos.
GPS Travel Recorder Utility
The last piece of software on the CD is called Visual GPS. This is a more simple piece of software that allows you to connect to the GPS and see position data and satellite information in real-time. It show you the raw data being received from the GPS unit as well as your altitude, speed etc.
It’s useful to see what the GPS is up to at any given time and to check that it’s working but I think that it’s use is fairly limited. You cant make any configuration changes in this application although you can capture and save GPS data as an NMEA file if you want.
Visual GPS
Conclusion:
The QSTARZ BT-1000X is an excellent GPS unit for both data logging and GPS navigation. Definitely the best and most sensitive unit I have ever used. I bought it for geo-tagging photos but ended up using it as an external GPS unit with my HTC Touch Diamond.
I just wish that they unit had drivers for the Mac even if I could just download the data from the units memory.
If you are looking for a way to geo-tag your photos to use with iPhoto, Googlemaps of Flickr then the combination of the QSTARZ BT-1000X and the supplied software really does mean that it’s a piece of cake.
The QSTARZ BT-1000X gets my thumbs up!
Posted by: Matt
[ Post Tags: QSTARZ, BT-Q1000X, GPS, data logger, tracyandmatt.co.uk ]
So the news in the iPhone world this week has been dominated with the Cydia installer, you know the installer that you get when you Jailbreak your iPhone, they will be offering an alternative to paid applications in the App Store. So what does this all mean for iPhone users and to Apple.
Well personally speaking the App Store offers a fantastic service and developers get a fair share of the sale of an application and it all works well with the exception of a few things mainly the restrictions and rejection procedures of Apple.
For example, we are still waiting for decent turn by turn GPS software, office suite and hell even a video camera and MMS integration. If Apple released their grip and started allowing us to use our super powerful smartphones to do the things we want to do this wouldn’t even be news worthy.
According to the Kinoma blog, there can be big differences in quality and speed between one storage card and another. For quality, all you can really do is buy a brand you trust. But for speed, the good news is that there’s now a standard way of classifying the throughput of SD and SDHC cards — the Speed Class.
It’s really easy to understand, too. Class 2 cards guarantee a minimum transfer speed of 2 MB/second, Class 4 cards a minimum speed of 4 MB/second, etc. A card’s Speed Class should be clearly marked as a number in a round “C”, as shown above.
Kinoma recommend that you always buy storage cards that are Class 4 or higher, and normally buy Class 6 cards wherever possible. With a faster card your phone spends less time on data transfers, which translates to more efficient media playback. As an added bonus, copying media between the card and a PC will be faster as well.
via Kinoma Blog
SplashData have launched version 2.0 of File Magic for iPhone. File Magic is a file transfer utility that enables you to drag and drop any type of file on your desktop to your iPhone or iPod touch so you can take them with you – like a briefcase. It comes with free desktop companion software that makes it very easy to sync documents, videos, music or pictures from your Windows or Mac desktop to your iPhone or iPod touch.
With the new version, you can now "beam" files wirelessly between iPhone devices. You can also email files as attachments from File Magic on the device, and the company has tightened up security with a password option to protect File Magic access.
Regular visitors to the site will know that we always start device review with an unboxing video which invariably includes a quick tour of the product. Just hit the link videos link up at the top of the page to see how many videos we already have.
Love them or hate them there’s no denying the popularity of unboxing videos, YouTube is full of them and even my own YouTube profile has over 3.8 million views.
A few months ago Paul (from MoDaCo) and I were talking about unboxing videos and at the time we said ‘we should really do something with our videos’, as we both have a number of them on YouTube and sitting on a few of the other video hosting services.
After a couple of months of talking about it we finally did something and Paul and I are now pleased to announce the launch of our new site unboxings.com
We are both uploading our unboxing videos to the site (there are still some more to go on) but the site will act as one central place to have a look at past and present videos in, we hope, a cleanly laid out site. Between us we unbox new ‘toys’ every few days so there should be new contnt added fairly regularly.
Of course we’ll still have videos and reviews here on tracyandmatt.co.uk but unboxings.com will be a place to see only unboxing videos!
Please do let us have your feedback. Paul and I are keen to know what you think of the site and the concept itself and why do you think unboxing videos are a love or hate thing??
Posted by: Matt
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