Dell Mini 9 - Welcome Back (with Windows 7)

jcornel — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:38:00 GMT

Well almost 30 days later to the day, I have in my hands a new Dell Mini 9. Here are the specs:

Base Dell Mini 9 Plus:

2GB DDR2-800 PC2-6400 SODIMM

Runcore 64GB SSD (according to specs several times faster than the factory installed disk and has mini usb port on SSD)

Webcam, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.

Total Cost: $508 not including sales tax and shipping.

How was this low cost achieved you might ask? Well Cyber Monday helped and basically I bought the Dell base as the cheapest configuration possible. Then I bought the 2GB DIMM on EBay and used an EBay coupon code to get a discount on the SSD as well. It could have even been cheaper if I went with the refurb but I wasn't ready to risk it yet. Although I am bit irritated that if you go to Dells website as of today you can order the 64GB SSD and 2GB DIMM but only if you pick the Ubuntu OS. That's very unfortunate.

For the last week I have been running Windows Vista Ultimate (for the games) with Office 2007 Ultimate and it could not be working better. I would even venture to say it runs as fast as my Lenovo T61P with 8GB of RAM and Vista x64 Enterprise. One glitch or thing to be aware of I haven't attempted to figure out yet is running certain codec's for video will take a few seconds (15 - 40 sec.) so sync the audio and video of a video file. Once it syncs up it run windowed and full screen without missing a beat. As a side note I don't see that issue on XP.

Also I have been asked how do you install the OS on your Mini 9. Well very simply put I use a USB Flash Drive. (8GB to be exact, though would work with 4GB) Here are the steps below:

If running Vista run CMD.EXE as Administrator (Right Click "Run as Administrator")

diskpart
select disk # (# is the disk you are working with)
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit

Then

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ (d:\ being the location of the CD and e:\ being your flash drive)

But WAIT there's more!

As of tonight I am now running Windows 7 Beta. (Currently available on MSDN, TechNet etc.) How did I install it without a CD. Exact same way as above. I just extracted the DVD ISO to the flash drive that was already formatted for Vista and 15 minutes later I have Windows 7 running on my Dell Mini 9.

First thoughts. WOW! Not a wow as a techy but as an end user. There are a bunch of cool little tools that make my Mini 9 even more useful for meetings and note taking. As for the Windows Experience Index :

Processor: 2.2

Memory (RAM): 4.4

Graphics: 2.3

Gaming Graphics: 3.0

Primary Hard Disk: 5.8

Remember that little video glitch I mentioned earlier. Gone under Windows 7. Video is clean and sharp and perfectly sync'ed up.

If you have any questions drop me an email. However here on out we are back to focusing on Virtualization.

Virtualization Jason : Dell

Dell Mini 9 - Welcome Back (with Windows 7)