Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Review
Netbooks are a lot cheaper than full-size notebooks, the battery keeps much longer, and if you spend the most time in a web browser at all, the performance limits are not so big deal. With the Dell Inspiron Mini 10, tried to tap the needs of the market in the same way so many companies do – by the use of Intel’s tiny Atom processor.
What you might not be aware that the atomic two popular versions, which has N-series and Z series. The Mini 10 netbook uses the Z-series. The main difference between the two versions is that the Z-series features a chipset with a better graphics processor in it. It is a better match for Vista GPU-accelerated desktop, although we would not recommend trying Vista on this system. More importantly, the Z-series chipset supports the kind of video acceleration technology, which enable playback of video very smoothly (a little, the atom N-series does not do too well) makes.
The mini-10 with an Atom Z530 processor (1.6GHz), that we will cost $ 534, as configured, tested. The price represents our mini 10 over the usual limit of a netbook (even though units starting at under $ 350). Had in addition to the Atom Z530 processor, 1GB of RAM, our test device soldered-on, 802.11g Wi-Fi, an Ethernet port (10/100, not gigabit), three USB ports, headphone jack, microphone input, a HDMI – output, and a slightly higher-res screen than most 10-inch netbooks (1366 x 768). Frankly, there’s not much in the higher resolution of this size, and find themselves squinting to read it. You can, of course, the size of the icons and fonts and such, but do not treat Windows XP, such as resizing very graceful. The reason for the video-kick is in no small part to the optional on-board HDTV tuner that came with our unit.
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Yep, this is insignificant input jack somewhere between a USB port, a combination SD Memory Stick card reader, and a power connector on the left side. It seems a little out of place, but the internal ATSC tuner Hauppauge WinTV MOD7700 meshes fairly well with the included Dell digital TV software. As long as you a decent signal with the supplied antenna, TV video again plays quite smoothly. But why a TV tuner and share in a netbook? It makes sense in a large notebook in which you want TV recording, and could then see them on the street, but the small, slow hard drives in netbooks are not good for it. You actually have to draw on the tuner and the antenna and the hunt for a signal. It would be easier to find a real TV.
The video decoding in general (TV and others) is moderate – high-definition channels are just a bit rough, and standard-def channels need to be cleaned a little. And the real problem is that the integrated graphics GMA500 does not do anything for most Web video, like Hulu or YouTube. Watching and standard-def YouTube videos to its normal size in the browser window was so hacked off a mess that you want to stop, just in seconds. Now, if Dell does this function in an ion-based Netbook that probably make up the difference.
The 10.1-inch screen actually looks a bit small on this system, in part because the body is large enough to accommodate a 11-inch screen. Many border surrounds the screen, and it does not combine well with the relatively high resolution and small size. It only exaggerates the impression that you are a burden to read on the screen. But the picture quality, the screen is somewhat surprising as small for decent and cheap, with adequate contrast, color reproduction and viewing angle.
The keyboard is large enough to easily, but the “extra” keys as function keys, Home End, and arrows are a bit narrow. The trackpad is the greatest difficulty. It is a kind buttonless design, which you need to get on the left or bottom right corner, press left or right-click, but it is difficult to use in practice. They often will you move the mouse pointer when you try to click on what you have to more mis-clicks and no clicks when you should do really.
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The Mini 10 is the power of what you expect from an atom-based notebooks. Also runs on Windows XP, the system quickly become unresponsive. Although low power is a fact of life on most netbooks, the Mini 10 out a little bit worse than most of its competition scored only 32 on 6 World Bench. The best netbooks in its price range score in the upper 30s. Battery life is good to just under 7 hours, but not as stellar as the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA, or the Toshiba NB205 mini-N310 (this may take a little bit later than 10 hours). You can not even “hackintosh” Mini 10 (the process of buying a compatible laptop and installing OS X on it). The integrated GMA500 graphics card is incompatible.
All that said, the $ 500-plus netbook seems a little expensive, because all the extra on-board bells and whistles, which came with our review model. Drop down to a lower-res screen, forget the TV tuner, and you have a decent machine you would probably cost somewhere in the vicinity of $ 400. Dell plans are in place with the Mini 10, but a netbook with a small screen and the memory is not the ideal platform for a TV tuner, and they’re just not winning us over the setting of benchmarks and industrial design.
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