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World First Review of Dell's 12.1in Netbook
An anonymous reader points to what's claimed to be "the world's first look at Dell's 12.1" netbook," running at Australian Personal Computer Magazine. There's a bit of gushing at the beginning, but this is followed by some informative pictures, informal battery-life tests, and interesting background about the machine's components. Upshot: it's a well-made, decent-performing small laptop with a better keyboard than smaller netbooks and more wireless options than most. However, it's shorter on battery life (bigger screen, smaller battery) than Dell's smaller Mini 9, and less easily upgraded.
Apple customers.
Whilst I understand its a limitation of the chipset, 1Gb of RAM and Vista.... ewww. Internal 3G card is a nice touch though.
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
At $1000 I'm not sure who this is targeted at.
1000 AUD is about 600 USD, which seems in line with the competition.
I think it is quite useful of you want to work while travelling in an airplane on a train. The 9" netbooks are not really good for anything that involves a lot of typing.
A bought a DELL latitude x200 off ebay a couple of years ago for exactly that reason and I have never regretted it. Back then this was still a business notebook and costed $3000+ (I paid $250, years later). The $999 price point is not too bad.
The main drawback seems to be the battery. But did you know they had outlets in many european trains?
I'm not sure when the reviewers and manufacturers will get the popularity of netbooks. There are a minimum set of features (which almost all of them have) but after that there are only three important points: price, size / weight and battery life.
The review sites seem to spend so much time worrying about the bells and whistles that they're accustomed to with bigger laptops, but these come at a compromise of the most important aspects.
This almost seems like it is a full blown laptop again. The EEE had me hopefull we would see really affordable laptops. But then it was a big hit. Prices went up specs went up. What do we have now. Normal laptops only they are called mini.
Just me or is it hard to get a sense of scale in those photos when there's barely any other objects in there? There's a pen, half a hand, and another laptop that I don't know how big it is.
I always struggle with photos like this because it's obviously difficult to find a reference object /everyone/ is familiar with, but even a few little things might've been helpful in some of the photos.
I question too. $1000 (CDN) bought me my current laptop (an HP tx2512) in August, which has a 1.9ghz AMD X2 processor, 3GB ram, 250GB hard drive, half decent video (ATI 3200HD), same 12.1" screen size (same 1280x800 resolution too), and is a convertible tablet. About the only thing the Dell does better is that it is thinner, a little lighter (mine is only 2 and some pounds), and has a built-in 3G modem, though I can stick one of those in my expresscard slot (which the Dell lacks) if I had need.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Wow, a netbook with a large screen! If the trend keeps on going this way, next year we'll see an innovative netbook with a 15.4 screen! First in the world!
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
The "netbook" market has moved so fast over the last year, I'm glad I didn't stump up for an early Eee PC. This looks like it may hit my sweet spot of price/performance/size.
I'm at least a year from buying a new laptop and I can't see me replacing my current MacBook with another mac. As much as I like MacOS, I can't justify the cost of a full spec laptop. Currently, little of what I do stretches my MacBook's performance, no games, no video editing. A cheap, portable and rugged netbook running linux is just up my street. Another MacBook would be a nice to have, but at a price-tag that I just cant justify.
I think this is something some manufacturers are missing, fewer and fewer people are pushing the limits of their existing hardware. There just doesn't seem to be the pressure from software as there used to be. I know there are applications that need more power than a cheap latop can deliver (games, high-end graphics work, video editing), but this is becoming an increasingly small segment of the whole market.
Paul
Paul Leader
The chipset can only run Vista? Egads! What unholy portent is this? I cast thee OUT!
*throws netbook into the dark Abyss of Tortured Souls and Recycled Cardboard*
which is totally what she said
From the article:
"Happily, the Inspiron Mini 12 adopts a more standard sub-note layout with near full-size keys (a quick measure of a prised-off letter key came in at 1.8mm x 1.7mm, but we could be out by a few mils)."
That's like 0.071 X 0.067 inches. Does it come with a stylus for those keys?
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
The answer is simple: people who value size and price more than performance. I don't want to fall in a 640K is enough for anybody stance here, but be honest with yourself: how often do you use the full power of your machine when not gaming or photo-editing (for which these machines are woefully inadequate)? My work laptop, is currently using 1% to 5% of it's power and it's over two years old (the time I've been working at this company, and I'm not sure if it was new). That's it.... At home, my wifes desktop is much older (bought autum 2003) and it rarely uses up more than 10% for our typical usage. I consider our usage to be rather typical.
So, even 5 year old machines don't get to see much load. So, you're on the move want to surf a bit and read your email? Well, you don't need a Dual-Core Multi-Gigahertz machine for that anymore. So why spend more? So, that's for the performance part.
Now the size part: typical laptops are 15.4" or larger. I don't know about you, but that's pretty huge and not exactly something a woman would put in her purse. Indeed, there are machines that were small, but they were also very expensive...
Which brings us to price. The small portable machines from a few years ago were extremely expensive and also didn't have the oompha that their larger cousins have. I wouldn't ever spend 2500€ to have a small and slightly underpowered laptop. However, I have no qualms paying 300€ for a small-very-underpowered-but-adequate laptop.
As a matter of fact, up until January 2007, my primary laptop was an old P-III 600MHz/512Meg RAM dual-booting XP and Linux... It ran absolutely fine for my light usage. Compare that to the underclocked Celeron 630MHz in the original Asus EEE PC... Well, the only differences? The Asus is much smaller and lighter: I do lack a bit screen estate. The Asus EEE 900, however has a 1024x600 screen, which is pretty close to what my old P-III laptop had, being 1024x768.
AU$1000=US$620=CN$788=GBP391=EUR492
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.